


v3 in i nil iiii itii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii t 



HONGRAB 

JOHN COLE 



BJ 158 
.A2 






VI 



I 51 


P 1 


■nro 




1 


1 

HI' 


iiiiiiLi in 







ittml 




Class _ 

Book 

Copyright N°_ 



.2.O. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



An Honorable 
Youth 



BY 

JOHN COLEMAN ADAMS 



BOSTON 
UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 

1906 



*><■ 



.V 



^/ 



LIBRARY ef CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 1 1906 

v. Copyright Entry . 
CLASS /^ XXcJiNT 1 



Copyright, 1906 

BY 

UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 



" SKje tfjougijtg of goutfj are 
long, long tl)0iigf}t0." 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. AN HONORABLE YOUTH. I 

II. THE THOUGHTFUL LIFE. 1 7 

III. COMMERCIALISM. 41 

IV. THE ETHICS OF GOOD MANNERS. 63 
V. AN HONEST MAN. 83 

VI. THE MINISTRY OF WANT. I07 

VII. THE DISCIPLINE OF ABUNDANCE. 1 23 

VIII. THE OLD BOOK AND THE NEW AGE. 1 43 

IX. DOES IT PAY TO THINK? 1 65 

X. THE FUNCTION OF FAITH. l8l 

XI. MEN, WOMEN, AND CHURCHES. 1 99 



AN 

HONORABLE 

YOUTH 



J» 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 



A Badge of Honor 

TT 7HEN a man has grown gray in righteous- 
ness and service to his fellows, they re- 
cognize his achievement and congratulate him on 
his honorable old age ; and earnest and ambitious 
youth are often urged to action and to sacrifice 
in their present years, in order that they may 
earn this guerdon of a good life, and retire on 
their reputations when they shall have attained 
that respected estate. But I have never been 
able to see why one ought not to strive as 
earnestly for an honorable youth as for an 
honorable old age. I suspect that there is a 
wrong theory of life under this style of 
exhortation. At all events, it needs to be 
coupled with some such injunction as that of 

i 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Paul, "Let no man despise thy youth." The 
proverb runs, " A hoary head is a crown of 
glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness." 
So are the fair bright locks of youth. So are its 
beauty, its vigor, and its freshness. Everything 
that can be said of the honor which redounds to 
age which is godly, can be said as emphatically 
of youth under the same conditions. 



Undervaluing Youth 

So the old appeal comes afresh to young men 
and women not to despise, to undervalue, or to 
neglect their youth, nor to let anybody else do 
so. Let no man or woman, least of all yourself, 
despise your youth. Let us be clear as to what we 
mean by this phrase. You " despise your youth " 
when you make its years and its labors seem 
unimportant or trivial ; your youth is just as dig- 
nified and honorable a time as any other period 

2 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

in all your life. You despise it when you treat 
it as a time for play, the recreation period, irre- 
sponsible, careless, and free of duty ; your youth 
calls for work and holds you to duty, after its 
own fashion, as sternly as any later years. You 
despise your youth when you give it over to 
vices, to sins of folly or passion, under the false 
notion that you can put them all away later on, 
and settle down to a career of rectitude and 
peace ; the sins of youth have a way of lasting 
and of troubling a lifetime. You despise your 
youth when you banish from it all sweet and 
inspiring thoughts of God and His kingdom, 
and spend those fresh and glorious years without 
ever feeling that your life is God's business and 
that God's business is your life. 

Whatever lessens the sense, in your mind, of the 
dignity, the importance, the influence of your pres- 
ent years, is in the deepest and the most vital sense 
a contempt for your youth. Try to get such a 
view and outlook into your real life as will reveal 
3 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

to you the immense honor which you may win for 
these years you are passing through. For re- 
member, the only way you can prevent other men 
and women from despising your youth is by not 
despising it yourself. 



Beginning on the Heights 

Do not, then, despise your youth by adopting 
a low ideal. Begin your life on the heights. 
No man sees the best of life, no man realizes all 
there is of its joy and glory, who begins by 
looking at it through the fogs and shadows of a 
low conception of duty and of character. You 
cheat yourself of some of the choicest expe- 
riences of life, you rob it especially of the glory 
of strength and power, if you begin your career 
with base affections and with commonplace aims. 
Low ideals make low actions. The soul that 
takes to the mire of the swamps and sewers of 
4 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

life besmirches its own nature. You are entitled 
to a radiant vision, to an exultant joy, as you go 
forth to meet the years. You cannot have your 
birthright if you plunge into the clouds and 
gloom of youthful sins and excesses. 



& 



The Fallacy of the " Wild Oats " 
Theory 

Do not, therefore, accept the abominable 
doctrine, born of ignorance and black-hearted- 
ness, that the quickest way to a manhood of tran- 
quillity is through a youth of riot. You might 
as well say that the quickest cut to a maturity 
of strength was through a youth of disease. 
That is a worn-out doctrine, physically and 
mentally. We no longer put up with the lazy 
and imbecile theory that our children must all 
have a certain round of diseases — mumps, 
measles, scarlet fever, small-pox — in order to be 
S 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

free from them later on. We are taking hold of 
these scourges of physical life and stamping 
them out. We are saying that our children need 
not suffer from them at all, and shall not if care 
and quarantine can prevent. That is the only 
true theory of moral life as well. We will no 
more grant that it is necessary to sap a young 
life of its strength by evil courses — falsehood, 
recklessness, drunkenness, licentiousness — than 
that it is necessary to rob a young body of its 
energies by loathsome diseases. The " wild 
oats" theory of youth, the idea that it is best to 
have one's fling and sober down, rests on two 
perilous falsehoods. One is that you can have 
your " fling" without throwing away something 
invaluable and irrecoverable. The other is that 
you can " sober down " without having any 
serious loss to be really sober about. Something 
is gone from life which you can never quite 
regain here, when you gamble your youth for the 
low pleasures of sense and malice. 
6 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Happily, under Christian teaching, we have 
half-mastered that truth. Nobody for an in- 
stant will claim that a girl will make a better 
woman because she has been wayward, frivolous, 
or sinful in her youth ! God forbid, we say, 
when such a proposition is urged. It is blas- 
phemy against woman's nature. But it is no 
truer of a young man than of a young woman. 
One law for youth and maiden ! That is the 
gospel ! " For in Christ Jesus there is neither 
male nor female. " 



Some Lax Maxims 

If you will believe this teaching, you will see 
the error and the folly of that theory so common 
in our schools and colleges that it is eccentric 
and priggish to have and to hold a high ideal of 
scholarship and of conduct. To begin your 
lives with the conviction that nobody ought 
7 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

to aim higher than the commonplace and the 
average, is to rank yourselves, as far as to-day 
goes, among the dull, the unfaithful, and the 
transgressors. That is their rule of life. " I 
am as good as the rest," they all say. " They 
all do it." What does that mean ? It is what 
the boodler says to justify his political thefts 
from the people. It is what the gambler says, 
pointing to the business man who speculates in 
cotton and in copper. It is what the merchants 
say, who would justify short weight and shoddy 
goods. The pupil who cheats at his studies, 
and who is content with a low mark and an 
indifferent deportment, and uses this excuse, is 
ranking himself in his world where these people 
stand in the life of the business and political 
world. He sets himself down among the misde- 
meanants and the downright criminals. I am 
anxious and troubled when I hear a youth use 
these phrases of the lower ranks, the maxims of 
the slothful and the lax. You dishonor and 
8 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

despise your own youth when you consent to 
that theory of school life or college life. You 
begin your life by degrading your life. You are 
robbing yourself of the greatest motive power of 
a high success — an exalted ideal. 

The Great Now 

Once more; do not dishonor your youth by 
thinking of it as nothing but a time of sowing, 
of output, of effort, which brings with it no 
reaping, no ingathering, no results. It is a 
false and dishonoring view of life which 
teaches that all the returns are postponed till 
another world; that there is no heaven here 
on earth, but that you must wait for that till 
the life to come. The new theology has 
destroyed that doctrine beyond all chance of 
resurrection, and we are believers in the power 
of the present life to return present joy, in a 

9 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

present heaven, in the joy of the here and the now. 
Let the youth apply that same thought to the 
years of his young manhood. Let him think 
of his life as a season in which he gets all 
that he gives, which yields returns on his 
investment of strength, of sacrifice, of industry, 
as fast as he makes it. Do not think that 
you are to postpone the hope of reaping the 
good of a youth of rectitude and love till your 
body is bent and your vigor is gone. That 
is quite to miss life's real meaning. The object 
of a Christian life is not to get something at 
its end ; it is to provide for a safe and pleasant 
journey. It is not the laying up of treasures 
for the future ; it is having it to spend all the 
time. Nobody works through the day in order 
to get a good night's rest afterward ; but we 
work for the joy of labor, and the reward of 
living. The youth and maiden are in as 
immediate relations to God and to the world 
as they will ever be. Duty has begun ; 
10 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

the commandments are in force ; penalty and 
reward are in operation for the young as for 
the old. The great Now is yours, and you are 
in a real world, whose responsibilities and whose 
privileges call and invite you every day. 
Honor your youth by realizing this about it, 
that it is a real time, a time of reward and of 
realization and of actual relation to God. It 
is true that you are living for a future. But 
the only way you will do anything worthy for 
that future is by what you do for to-day. And 
meanwhile to-day has its claims and its duties 
and its commands that belong wholly to 
itself. 



A Life that Ends with Youth 

If you live with this thought as a guiding 
one, you will have a solution to that mystery 
which so many find a hard one to solve, when 
ii 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

you see one of your companions cut down in 
his youth, or when, perhaps, you yourself stand 
face to face with the solemn fact that for you 
there is to be no old age, no slow maturity 
and long years of preparation to go hence. 
Many a boy, many a girl, has had to confront 
that sobering reality. Then if you have 
dishonored your youth by putting away from 
it all seriousness, earnest work, loving worship 
and service, you will realize how you have 
been cheating yourself and that somehow there 
has been an awful mistake in your ideals and 
in your work. But if you have made good 
use of your time, and honored your present, 
you shall feel the sweet assurance that if you 
have no more years on earth ahead of you, 
you have made good use of those behind 
you. 



12 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

A Fine Saying 

Not long ago there was laid on my table 
a memorial card, in loving remembrance of 
Francis Way] and, and of his work for the 
Connecticut Prison Association, by his associate 
in the noble work, John C. Taylor. That card 
closes with these fine words : " No more wise 
counselor or charming companion than Francis 
Wayland ever comes into the life of any man, 
and his absence makes familiar scenes seem 
strange and unnatural. Without having a doubt 
of the existence of a heavenly home, let me say : 

" ' If there is another world he lives in bliss, 
If there is not, he made the most of this.' " 

That is a fine saying by which to interpret 
your youth to yourselves. An honorable youth 
permits him who possesses it to say: "If there 
be more years, this helps to make them sure 
of honor. If these be all, they themselves 
have been honorable." 

*3 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

A Youth of Nazareth 

There was once a youth of Nazareth, who 
fulfilled all these high conditions which are 
the marks of an honorable youth. From His 
earliest days he was found in His Father's 
house. He lived in His present, and though 
His years were few, He immortalized them by 
the one immaculate career of this earth. He 
lived and He wrought on the heights of life. 
For Him there was no descent and degeneracy, 
no sinning and repenting, no waste and no 
regret. And He set forever the standard of a 
true youth, honorable, devout, consecrated. 
He calls young men and women to follow Him in 
that ideal youth which walks with God, which 
has begun the service of man, and which 
honors itself. 



14 



THE 

THOUGHTFUL 

LIFE 



iS 



THE THOUGHTFUL LIFE 



The Plea for Education 

/\NE of the real marks of our land and gen- 
eration is the zealous interest everywhere 
shown in education. The school, the college, and 
the university, fill a vast place in the public 
thought. And this trait of Americans, rightly 
read, is an impressive sign of the increasing sense 
of the value and the power of the thoughtful life. 
It shows the American sense of the importance of 
study, of taking heed for the life, of intelligence, 
foresight, outlook. It is a mighty plea for culture, 
for sound learning, for the increasing empire of 
pure thought. The one great need of our time, 
the necessity and the pleading cry of our genera- 
tion, is for this thoughtful life in business, in 
politics, in social organization, in religion. 



*7 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

The Zeal for Doing 

I know that this declaration does not jump 
with the times. We are all familiar with the super- 
ficial demand for just what America has always 
had in abundance ; for aggressiveness, for push 
and for pull; for facility in doing things and 
producing effects ; for all that goes in the train 
of courage, dash, self-confidence, and a restless, 
insatiable zeal to be doing. It may savor of te- 
merity to question whether the "strenuous life" 
is the thing we are most in need of. But surely 
America has always held in especial honor the 
men and women who achieve, who do, who 
succeed, who produce effects. Only a nation full 
to overflowing of the " strenuous life " could have 
subdued a continent, built a wholly new political 
structure, set the pace for the world in commerce, 
manufacture, and political institutions, in a little 
more than two centuries. No soft and indolent 
being could have produced such results. If there 
18 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

is any quality more than another which marks 
the American character, always has marked it, and 
always will mark it, it is strenuousness. The 
American is the incarnation of the initiative, of 
the affirmative sentence, and the active voice. 
This outciy- for strenuousness is not, therefore, 
the voice of a new impulse, just born in our 
national life. It is the reminiscence of a more 
boisterous day in our development — what Prof. 
Goldwin Smith calls a " vehemence of character 
still breathing of frontier life." 



.* 



The Saving Grace of Thoughtfulness 

But precisely because we have always been 
such a strenuous folk, do we need the compensa- 
ting and the saving grace of thoughtfulness. 

It is a magnificent thing to see a youth or a 
people start out for a goal and bend themselves 
to some great end and purpose. But always 

*9 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

before that start can be made, the purpose has to 
be thought out and the way laid in the mind. 
Behind the valiant deed there lies the mighty 
passion. Under the passion burns the thought 
which begets it. " Intellect," says Emerson, " is 
the simple power anterior to all action." Before 
we act let us know what we are trying to do, why 
we are trying to do it, and whether it is worth 
doing at all. Doing, after all, is not the most 
important thing in the world. 



J> 



The Futility of Life all Action 

It is pathetic, when it is not exasperating, to 
hear the changes rung on the duty of a man to do, 
even if he misdo ; to bring forth a result, even if 
it be a blunder ; to go somewhere, even if it be 
to perdition ; to get something, even though it be 
his quietus. There is a deep and dangerous 
fallacy in all this, which only a glance at the 
20 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

most plain and practical matters in your lives 
ought to expose. It is well to hit hard, when you 
are not hitting a stone wall or a mountain, in 
which case you are only smashing your own fist. 
It may show grit to charge the center of the line ; 
but every football player knows that the winner 
is often the man who goes around the end. The 
crowd in the grand stand roars at the cracking 
strike which the nimble fielder captures ; but 
time and again the game is won by the teasing 
" bunt." It is very brilliant and daring to carry 
on sail and defy the squall. But when the skipper 
is clearing away the wreckage of broken spars, 
or floundering in the water, he wishes he had 
reefed. 

By all means do something in life, provided you 
do it intelligently. Go somewhere, provided 
you know whither you are bound. But remember 
that to achieve with understanding is the only wise 
strenuousness. Life which is all action is blind, 
superficial, futile, stupid. Ten thousand horse- 

21 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

power down in the hold of the steamer is a mag- 
nificent thing only so long as there is a compass 
on the bridge. Break that compass, and those 
engines are nothing but a menace and a peril. 
The locomotive on the limited express is a 
triumph of mechanical art only as long as it is 
held by the rails laid by the guiding thought of 
the civil engineer. The forces that drive must 
be supplemented by the passive needle, by the 
compelling grip of the tenacious rails ; otherwise 
they become energies that shatter, wreck, and 
destroy. 

In proportion, then, as American life is char- 
acterized by energy and by aggressiveness, it ought 
to be protected, guided, controlled by insight and 
training. My contention is that the nee.d of out 
national life is not more steam, but better steer- 
ing. It is not more energy, but more light — not 
strenuousness, but sagacity. 



22 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Democracies Must Think or Fail 

The primary reason for this need lies always 
in the fact that as we live in a democratic republic, 
and in a state where the people are the rulers, 
their rule will be misrule unless they be trained 
to think. A subject may perhaps dispense with 
light and reason ; a sovereign citizen never can. 
It requires little intelligence to submit and to 
obey ; to rule, to use the ballot, to vote in the 
referendum, are responsibilities which cannot be 
sustained without thoughtfulness as well as nomi- 
nal education. If there is any proposition which 
is absolutely certain, in the way of social pro- 
phecy, it is that brains are to rule. If, therefore, 
the free citizen wishes to participate in the actual 
government of his country, he must learn to 
think, he must have a mind of his own, and 
must know how to use it. Otherwise he will fall 
into the hands of those who have learned to do 
what he has not. An ignorant democracy 
23 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

becomes an oligarchy. The multitude is a mob, 
and the mob is at the mercy of the bosses, and 
the bosses are the shrewd, the far-sighted, the 
crafty. There is no salvation for free institutions 
save in a thinking people. 



& 



Daily Life Growing Intricate 

But not only does the fundamental problem 
of having a republic at all demand a thought- 
ful people. The incidental problems of all life, 
common life, daily life, are all the time becom- 
ing more complex, and therefore more exacting 
of the intellect. Our daily affairs grow more 
difficult, intricate, trying. It takes a clear head 
and a good deal of thinking to get the world 
through a day's life in our age. Commerce is 
vastly more difficult. Manufacture is a science 
in itself. Politics is an art and a science in one. 
It calls for far more brain power to sail a 
24 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

steamship across the ocean now than it did 
to navigate the Mayflower from Delfthaven to 
Plymouth. To carry on a business to-day, with 
all the delicate relations between employers and 
employed, the speed and rush of production, the 
exact estimates required, and the nice economies 
practiced, would drive a merchant of the Middle 
Ages crazy. Even the modern householder, with 
his complicated equipment of conveniences, — 
his heater in the cellar, his range and gas stove 
in the kitchen, his electric buttons, his gas pipes 
and water faucets, must have a larger working 
knowledge of applied science than ever Pliny or 
Friar Bacon had heard of. The intellectual 
equipment is becoming an indispensable for the 
most trivial of affairs, the mere routine of life. 
The average mind must be bigger and better 
trained. 



2 5 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

The Scientific Habit 

For the world has learned never to forget 
or to ignore its knowledge, the scientific habit. 
That habit is neither more nor less than the 
thoughtful life made customary. It consists in 
pondering the meaning of things, and seeking 
their interpretation. It makes men ask, 
"How?" "Why?" "What?" of all the facts 
and happenings of life. It teaches them to 
look before they leap, and to think before 
they speak, to be sure they are right before 
they go ahead, and to be sure they are wrong 
before they back out. It holds no fact too 
sacred to be investigated, no tradition too 
venerable to be asked for its family history. 
It is the product of the thoughtful life, and it 
will make life more thoughtful still. 

The scientific habit, too, is the beginning of 
a larger development of facility in performance, 
of skill, aptitude, the power of applying knowl- 
26 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

edge to ends, and intelligence to wise uses — 
what the old-fashioned folk of New England 
used to call "faculty." They had another 
name for it, too, and a few years ago an 
alumnus of Amherst College declared at a 
commencement dinner that he hoped to be 
rich enough before he died to endow a chair 
in his alma mater, and, if he ever did, it 
would be a professorship in " gumption." It 
means the power of disposing of what one has 
learned, and working off one's knowledge 
usefully and wisely. 



& 



The Foolishness of Mere Acquisition 

It is easy enough for even a thoughtless 
mind to acquire, to store up knowledge, to be 
learned and loaded with facts. But to dispose 
of the fact at the right moment and the 
proper place is wholly a question of thought- 
27 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

fulness, of the intelligence which stops to 
think what it is doing. It is related that, on 
one of the battlefields of the civil war, a rifle 
was picked up which contained seven charges, 
one on top of the other. The excited soldier 
who used the piece had put in one after 
another without thinking to fire them off. 
That incident illustrates fully the uselessness 
and the fatuity of loading the mind with study 
after study, and fact after fact, which it never 
has learned how to use and apply. It is 
part of the thoughtful life to learn how to fire 
off knowledge, as well as to load it into the 
brain. 

The Thoughtful Life a Vigorous Life 

Now if the American youth be resolved to 

live the thoughtful life, he will find himself 

committed to anything but a passive and a 

negative career. The thoughtful life is not an 

28 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

easy life. It is neither the parent nor the 
child of leisure. It must never be undertaken 
by idlers or by cowards. The path of the 
thoughtful man is hard and thorny, a keen 
test of the endurance of heart and will. We 
are not to identify the thoughtful life with the 
old, contemplative life such as fascinated the 
souls of quiet and retiring men in former ages. 
There is no necessary connection between 
thoughtfulness and a convent cell, or an easy 
chair. He who thinks has need of a vigorous 
temper, a dauntless spirit. He has something 
else to do besides seclude himself in personal 
meditation and tranquil dreams. To think is 
to bestir one's self; it is to be awake and 
alert; it is to be up early looking for facts, 
and to study late into the night, trying to 
make out the truths they teach. It is to train 
the mind long and hard in the gymnastics of 
the reason, and to keep the training up all 
one's life. It is to enlist the whole nature in 
29 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

the effort to know and use the truth. " No 
one," says Charles Ferguson, " ever thought 
to any purpose with his head alone." 



The Cost of Truth 

For it costs something to attain the facts and 
the truth about the universe. Truth is expen- 
sive, a dear commodity. Nothing but righteous- 
ness costs as much, and there is nothing for 
which men are willing to pay any more. To 
get even the meager knowledge we possess has 
been the most exacting of undertakings. It is 
a labor on which human beings have spent 
strength, time, pangs, tears, life itself. It is an 
achievement which has called for superhuman 
sacrifices, divine consecration, a spirit of love 
like that of the godhead. It is strange that 
God should have put such a price on what is 
so necessary to man's good ; or rather it would 
3° 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

be strange if we did not know that this eternal 
challenge to his strength and courage was simply 
the demand for his tuition in the great school 
of power and of life. Every penny of the cost 
is invested for man's good; but it has to be 
paid. 

We may find a striking illustration of what 
it has cost to get our ideas into line with the 
facts, in the one single particular of electricity. 
To accumulate that little store of knowledge, 
thousands of men and women have struggled 
with poverty, wrestled with weakness, lavished 
strength, freely spent time, vitality, and life itself. 
They have added to the slender discoveries of 
Thales the Greek, and Boyle the Englishman, 
the researches of the Leyden students, of Volta 
and Galvani and Franklin. They have wrought 
out the patient ingenuities of Morse and Wheat- 
stone, of Bell and Dolbear, of Edison and 
Marconi, till the nimble spark has been made 
to carry messages on a wire, to convey the 
3i 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

accents of the human voice, to whisper through 
the great spaces of air. We mount a trolley 
car, and think it is the dynamo in the power- 
house which sends us on our way. But if we 
only thought a little farther we should find that 
it is the stored-up energy of ten thousand brains 
which pulls the car along its level tracks. The 
light from the incandescent wire is the trans- 
muted force of the human mind, the product of 
the life of thought. Or recall, again, what vigor- 
ous and rigorous thinking has been done to per- 
fect the schools in which our youths, if not by a 
royal highway, at least by a far easier path than 
of old, travel to large learning. It has cost 
more toil than we can compute to study and to 
understand the laws of the unfolding mind and 
to devise methods for training it aright. Pesta- 
lozzi and Froebel, Rousseau and Harriet Mar- 
tineau, Horace Mann and Herbert Spencer — 
these are but a few field marshals in that great 
and innumerable army which for two hundred 

3 2 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

years has been studying the problem of modern 
education. Who questions the positive force- 
fulness of this company of effective thinkers! 



& 



Honor for the Dreamers 

Yet do not let me be misunderstood. I am 
almost afraid that I shall seem to have implied 
that these busy thinkers have been valuable to 
the world because they have given it something 
which can be turned into money ; that they are 
to be judged useful because their thoughts have 
been set to work. Let me remind you that 
when they were doing their hardest thinking, 
they seemed to "be as far as possible from any- 
thing like a practical use of what they were 
thinking. They seemed little more than dream- 
ers and enthusiasts. But the society which has 
no place for such as they, which does not honor 
the men who are content to be called theorists 
33 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

and dreamers while they think out the founda- 
tions of new sciences and of institutions and of 
great policies, never can live. We must learn 
to pay a larger honor to the men who stand 
aloof from the crowd and observe and judge. 
We must learn to have somewhat better than 
a sneer for the men who do not drive the plow, 
nor swing the reaper, but prefer to turn aside 
and study the relations of seed and soil, of 
moth and flower, of rainfall and forest acreage. 
Do not grow up with disdain for the men who 
think things out, even if they do not work 
them out. 

" Academic " Thinking 

Herbert Spencer was as valuable a man to his 
day as a half-dozen Parliaments and cabinets, 
lords, commoners, and all. Is there any "cap- 
tain of industry " worth as much to this country 
as Ralph Waldo Emerson ? You will hear much 
34 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

unwholesome contempt to-day for what men call 
" academic " discussions of great questions — 
which simply means the discussion of them in the 
light of principle, and not of policy ; but the 
academic questions of to-day are the practical 
politics of to-morrow. And he who will not weigh 
them on their moral merits will never be in at 
the settlement of them. He will be left utterly 
out of sight. Your despiser of academic think- 
ing is usually a man who is too lazy or too cow- 
ardly to think down to ethical or intellectual hard- 
pan. And because he builds on the sands, his 
house will stand only till the rains descend and 
the floods come. 

The Call for Courageous Thinking 

But the thoughtful life calls not only for indus- 
try and endurance ; it exacts a peculiarly high 
quality of courage and of strength, because the 
thinker is bound to face very trying situations. 
3S 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

He will often find himself obliged to know that 
the popular creed is a delusion based on a lie. 
He will sometimes find out that what he himself 
loved to believe as the truth must be rejected as 
falsehood. He has to confront great possibilities 
of sorrow and even of terror; to risk collisions 
with party, church, the whole social order ; to 
invite discomfort of mind and of heart ; to incur 
the dislike, the suspicion of his fellow-men. The 
really thoughtful life leads one past the conven- 
tional shams to the reality of things. It corrects 
falsehood and opens up the truth. It forces us 
to see and to foresee the evil in the world and 
its consequences, to discern the steady gains of 
the good, the sure defeat of the bad. 

But these things are matters which it is not 
easy to communicate. It is not good for one's 
peace of mind to tell all that one knows. The 
world is not anxious to hear the truth, and gives 
it only a grudging welcome. So many people 
have their profitable enterprises built on shams ; 
36 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

so many are drawing large incomes from lies ; 
so many have staked their reputation for intelli- 
gence on what is without warrant in fact — that 
there is always great protest and outcry when the 
thoughtful man blurts out a new truth, or reit- 
erates an old one grown unpopular. That used 
to be the sign for kindling fires and oiling up the 
thumbscrews. It is still, sometimes, the signal 
for throwing stones and rotten eggs. And fre- 
quently the only response to a truth frankly spoken 
is to be called " heretic " or even " traitor." 

But whatever the income or the outcome from 
his thinking, it is the business of the honest, faith- 
ful man to proceed with the work, let come what 
will. One thing is always certain to come of all 
honest thinking, of every thoughtful life — that is, 
light, knowledge, the truth. However society 
revolts at first against the fruits of thought, it 
always ends by yielding to the truth at last, a 
glad, free, devoted allegiance. Your day will 
come ; and it is the only day which will endure. 

37 



COMMERCIALISM, 
PRO AND CONTRA 



39 



COMMERCIALISM, PRO AND 
CONTRA 

A New Word 

1 T 7TTHIN the last ten years a new term has 
made its way into the world's vocabulary. 
It is the word " commercialism." Its advent is, 
of course, the sign of a new fact in human society, 
or a new phase of some old fact. Words do not 
arise by spontaneous generation. There is always 
a reason for them in the life of men. And this 
comparatively new word is a significant straw 
showing which way the winds of human evolution 
are blowing. Some of the suggestions involved 
in that word are worth a passing thought. 



4i 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Commercialism as a Sign of Progress 

I suspect that there are two different ideas in 
men's minds as they talk about "commercialism," 
and they are quite wide apart in their force. 
They differ, as the use and the abuse of a thing 
differ. There is one conception of commercial- 
ism which regards it as the policy and practice 
and philosophy of life which have arisen with the 
growing tendency to peaceful pursuits and the 
decline of wars. Commercialism, in this sense, 
means the substitution of commerce for warfare, 
the prevalence of what Herbert Spencer calls the 
industrial over the militant type of character. It 
means the increasing interest of men in peaceful 
pursuits, the raising of crops, the manufacture of 
all the commodities which minister to comfort 
and use, the exchange of those commodities for 
mutual benefit. Mankind is rapidly transferring 
its interests from war to peace, from killing to 
prolonging life, from destruction of wealth to its 
42 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

creation and increase. That is the meaning of 
all which goes to mark this as a commercial age, 
of the enormous growth of industries, of the grow- 
ing influence of the tradesman, the merchant, the 
financier, of the building of ships, the laying of 
railways, the stringing of telegraph wires and 
cables, the strife for larger and better markets, 
for freer and fairer conditions of work. Com- 
mercialism, in this sense, is the grand, impressive, 
eloquent sign of the world's progress. It is the 
witness to the fact we have arrived one stage 
nearer the millennium. 



•* 



Commercialism as a Portent of Evil 

But there is another thing which is much 
talked of under this same name. It is the 
tendency to place all values, reckon all progress, 
compute all the gains of life in terms of dollars 
and goods. It is the greed for gain, grown to 
43 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

a passion, absorbing and commanding. It is 
the disposition to subordinate all politics to 
the lust of wealth, to make all parties the 
servants of trade, to buy and sell art, literature, 
religion itself as mere commodities, to be 
the prize of the highest bidder. It is the 
submission of all the higher interests of this 
life to the behests of the money power — the 
muzzling of the pulpits, the subsidizing of the 
press, the control of the university, by the kings 
of finance, the barons of the stock exchange. 
That, too, is a sense in which commercialism 
is talked about to-day. And it is a sign of evil, 
a portent of degeneration, one of the perils of 
a dangerous period of history. It is the 
besetting sin of a time in which industrial 
civilization is coming into power. 

It is time that we began to discriminate 

in our use of these meanings of this single term. 

We ought to have clear ideas as to what is 

the true and what the false commercialism ; 

44 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

what we ought to pray for, as a preparation 
for the kingdom of heaven, and what to set 
our faces against, as a quick and easy way to 
moral confusion and callousness. For certainly 
nobody ought to think with any disparagement 
of commercialism which is viewed as the 
successor of militarism. The age of trade 
is a vast distance ahead of the age of war. 
The merchant is a great gain upon the 
soldier. When the sword is beaten into a 
plowshare and the spear into a pruning hook 
the golden age begins to show in the distance. 
The kingdom of heaven itself is promoted by 
the advance of the kingdom of commerce. 



How Trade Means Mutual Service 

For think what commerce is. We have 
given it a bad name and identified it with all 
its own abuses and come to thini of it as a 
45 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

game of overreaching, of unfair advantage, of 
trick and fraud. But it is nothing of the sort. 
Commerce is one of the fairest and finest 
transactions our race has ever devised. It is a 
service rendered, a benefit started on its travels, 
selfishness transmuted into beneficence. A 
trade, which is commerce in its simplest term, 
is a mutual service rendered for mutual benefit. 
Each party to it is the gainer; yet each serves 
the other. There is, properly speaking, no 
best end of a fair bargain. The old time fur- 
traders of North America went to the Indians 
with hatchets, or guns, or powder and ball; 
the savage met the trader with beaver-skins 
and bear-skins, and all manner of peltry. They 
exchanged wares. Each got what he wanted 
more than the thing he gave up. Each was, 
therefore, benefited by the transaction. Each 
did the other a service. That is all there is to 
commerce. That is the philosophy of it in 
a nutshell. The whole vast machinery of 

46 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

trade in modern times is only a variation and 
expression of the principle of that simple 
transaction. Now, how can men be better 
employed than when they are rendering one 
another mutual service? Is not this stage of 
society a vast improvement upon that in which 
these same human beings are slaughtering one 
another, destroying property, and doing all 
manner of disservice one to another ? Does 
not the " commercial age " begin to justify 
itself as at least a forerunner of the age of 
righteousness and good will which we call " the 
kingdom of heaven?" Fundamentally, the idea 
of commerce is entirely consistent with the 
principles of the Golden Rule, or of the 
second Great Commandment. And a population 
in which the aim of the people was fair trade 
with one another for mutual gain would be very 
highly qualified for the kingdom of God. 



47 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Commerce the Secular Ally of 
Christianity 

But the effect of commerce is fully equal to 
the broad and humane principle on which it 
rests. It is the great secular ally of all that 
Christianity stands for and begets. Christianity 
calls for peace among men. Commerce 
is a great treaty-maker all over the world. 
Christianity proclaims brotherhood. Commerce 
promotes the intercourse which fosters the 
mighty bond. Christianity aims at the well- 
being of mankind. Commerce spreads comfort, 
convenience, contentment, as it rolls up its 
profits. Christianity would uplift men and women 
in spirit and understanding. Commerce carries 
enlightenment wherever it goes. Christianity 
calls on men to serve one another for love's sake. 
Commerce sets them to mutual service for 
mutual gain. Christianity stands for righteous- 
ness and morality. And wherever the age of 

4 8 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

commerce has succeeded the age of war, and 
the merchant has replaced the soldier, morals 
rise higher and the standards of conduct all 
improve. With all its shortcomings, with all the 
evils which grow out of the narrowness and 
bigotry of merchants and the fact that so many 
of them have only half outgrown the ideals of 
the military age, the age of commercialism is 
a distinct and glorious advance in civilization 
and world progress. 

The Might of the Merchant 

But commerce plays even a larger part than 
we have yet shown in the advancement of the 
brotherhood of man and the practice of 
righteousness. Not only is the commercial 
nation more civilized and enlightened than 
the nation which is mainly or merely warlike, 
it is also a stronger nation. It has vaster 
resources in the struggle for existence and 

49 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

supremacy. In the earlier days, the tribes 
which had learned to till the soil, to rear flocks 
and herds, and to exchange products with 
one another, were able to overcome their 
warlike but unproductive neighbors. For 
agriculture, manufacture, commerce, enable a 
greater population to live in a given area, and 
make the population stronger, richer, wiser, 
more influential. That made the survival of 
the commercial nations the more certain. And 
they who began by sneering at the peaceful 
people ended by submitting to them. Napoleon 
taunted the English with being a nation of shop- 
keepers. But England's trade made her so 
strong that she conquered her military rivals on 
the Continent ; and the emperor who gave 
France her fill of military glory wrecked her pres- 
tige, and from his lonely home in St. Helena had 
a chance to reflect on the superiority of the 
great people whom he had belittled with that 
sneer. Holland, in her life and death struggle 
5o 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

with Spain, taught the world how a little nation 
mighty in trade may defy a greater one whose 
power is no stouter than a sword blade. That 
will always be the way ; and the more dependent 
men become upon one another, as they are 
constantly becoming by freer trade and 
interchange of commodities, the very necessities 
of life, the less will be the need of standing 
armies and great navies. There is a mightier 
weapon than the sword, with which the 
modern nations may be coerced and made 
reasonable. It is the threat, expressed or 
understood, of a withdrawal of trade, a holding 
up of supplies, which means a quick starvation 
into submission. 

The Cornerstone of Supremacy 

There are some noisy people in this country 
who will never be still nor rest easily at night until 
we have a navy as big and as expensive as that 
5* 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

oi England, or France, or Germany. To them a 
powerful navy is the only bulwark of the Monroe 
Doctrine, the only weapon of defense against for- 
eign invasion, the only foundation of our suprem- 
acy as a world power. But they might have a 
good deal more sleep and peace of mind if they 
would only remember that there are other things 
to make nations pause before going to war with 
us. England would have to think of where she 
was to get her flour and her beef and her petro- 
leum if she cut off her trade with these United 
States. She would have to think whether she 
could afford to impoverish one of her very best 
customers in what she had to sell, and whether 
she could afford to sacrifice what she would lose 
on American securities held in England. She 
would recall with nervousness the terrible day of 
the sixties, when Lancashire cotton mills shut 
down and the operatives went hungry because the 
supply of cotton was cut off by the civil war in 
the states. This country will always be a hard 
52 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

one to go to war with, not simply because its sol- 
diers are brave and its armaments effective, but 
because, as Carl Shurz once said, it can live so 
long and so easily on its own fat. No nation will 
ever go to war again with a great commercial 
people without first counting the cost of such a 
rupture. And if it put England out of pocket a 
billion dollars to conquer a handful of Boer farm- 
ers and merchants in South Africa, there will be 
considerable hesitancy before she or any other 
great power grapples with a rich and resourceful 
commercial people. 

The Strenuousness of a Business Life 

But there is still another way in which the king- 
dom of commerce tends to become a part of the 
kingdom of heaven, and the age of trade is, in a 
double sense, an age of gold. The type of char- 
acter bred in a land of large commercial spirit is 
wholesome, noble, and vigorous. It lacks none 

S3 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

of the rigor and vigor of the soldier's and it adds 
a list of virtues peculiar to itself. It is common 
to talk as if the heroic and self-sacrificing virtues 
all declined with the advent of peace ; as if the 
tradesman were a weakling, and the child of an 
age of commerce only a money grabber and a 
poltroon. There never was a more mistaken 
estimate of ethical values. 

The lives of the world's great merchants, of its 
great explorers, pioneers, organizers, inventors — 
all of them the coadjutors of commercialism — 
show as signal courage, strength, endurance, force- 
fulness as those of the martial heroes. Columbus, 
on his audacious push westward, was a servant 
of the commerce of his day ; he was out for 
" business " — a new route to the marts of India. 
Lewis and Clark, and Daniel Boone, and John C. 
Fremont, and Oakes Ames, and all the host of 
pioneers and settlers whose vigorous courage and 
indomitable pluck gave us our great inland 
empire were all of them looking up trade. There 
54 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

is tl strenuousness " enough in the life of a 
Gloucester fisherman or the captain of an Atlantic 
liner to satisfy the most fanatical disciple of that 
type of life. We should find in the daily life of 
an American man of business, a man of affairs 
in the largest sense, enough conditions to try the 
stanchest courage, the most resolute will, the most 
unflinching industry. If you measure these men, 
rich men, perhaps, surrounded with comforts and 
with ease to-day, by the standards of Jesus Christ, 
you will find it true of them, as He found it true 
of a certain rich young man of his day ; that they 
" are not far from the kingdom of heaven." 



The Dignity of Commerce 

Indeed, they come short of its borders by only 
a little space. They have been trained in a good 
school. It only needs the right comprehension 
of such an age as ours, such a sense of its oppor- 

55 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

tunity and its duty, to turn our men and women 
into active and true disciples of Jesus of Nazar- 
eth. If the man of business would only believe 
in his calling, if he would only realize that he is 
at the head of the column of the advancing family 
of mankind ; if he would only claim the rights he 
is entitled to, as the leader and guide of men to a 
better civilization, we should soon have done with 
these false ethical values, and appreciate our own 
day and its characteristics at their true worth. 
But he is forever thinking of the money he will 
make and the glory he will get and the power he 
will win and the time when he can get out of 
business and do nothing. And so he is forever 
missing the real nobility of his work, the joy of 
doing, of making the world richer and happier, 
of serving his fellow-men in some of their many 
needs. He is still ready to cheer the warrior and 
envy him his gilt buttons and glittering weapons, 
never seeing that he sits in a higher place among 
the mighty and wields a power which great gen- 

56 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

erals never could assert. The man of commerce 
needs to feel his own dignity in the economy of 
progress and affairs. 

Business and Righteousness 

Then, too, he ought to feel his own work is 
part and parcel of the very highest interests of 
mankind — the interests which express them- 
selves in art and literature and music and 
morals. There is no need that we should wait 
till we have all made fortunes, or built up a 
foreign market, or settled the question of trade 
unions, before we proceed to consider the matter 
of education or build monuments or paint pic- 
tures or compose symphonies. But what are 
we thinking of? Do we picture the kingdom 
of Heaven as an estate in which nobody shall 
be busy making shoes, and building houses, 
and supplying food and raiment, but everybody 
living on his income and busy about nothing 
57 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

but being good ? A thriftless, shiftless estate 
that would be indeed ! The business of being 
good can only be carried on by being good at 
business. We are only about the Father's busi- 
ness when we are diligent in the tasks of our 
vocations, buying and selling honestly, doing 
good work without skimping, carrying out con- 
tracts to the letter, overcoming obstacles, con- 
quering our fears, and winning our way to the 
success of righteousness and courage. 

The world of commerce is not a separate 
world from that of ethics and religion. " It has 
been supposed," says Charles Ferguson, "that 
we could first settle the bread and butter ques- 
tion, and then proceed to finer issues. But there 
are no finer issues." All that is divinest and 
most Christ-like can be wrought, must be 
wrought out in this world, as we hammer and 
sew and paint and sing. Literature is the fine 
expression of the life that is. The best music 
is the song the souls of men sing as they toil. 

58 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

The great cathedrals were the expression of 
the religion of the men who worked to build 
them. And the greatest sculpture of all time — 
was it not done in honor of the divinities of the 
Egyptian and the Greek ? The Master of us all 
thought out his gospel and prepared his heart 
for Calvary while he worked at the carpenter's 
bench, and helped at the household tasks in 
Nazareth ! When the great and blessed day of 
the Lord shall come, in which there shall be no 
tears, nor sorrow, nor pain, it will find men 
bending to their tasks, diligent in business and 
praising the Lord. 



59 



THE ETHICS OF 
GOOD MANNERS 



61 



THE ETHICS OF GOOD 
MANNERS 

God Loves Adverbs 

TT7HEN Richard Baxter once talked of 
marrying a woman of good disposition 
rather than seek for one eminent for piety, he 
excused his preference, which might have 
seemed strange in a godly man, by saying that 
doubtless the grace of God could dwell with many 
persons whom he could not live with. He cer- 
tainly showed much sagacity, and planned wisely 
for his ov/n comfort and peace of mind. His 
experience had evidently taught him that " per- 
fect love may be at work in a soul without making 
it perfectly lovable." It takes a good deal of 
grace to make a soul abound in the graces ; 
and much time is likely to elapse between seed- 

63 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

time and harvest. There are a great many un- 
interesting, not to say disagreeable, saints. One 
of the problems of eschatology is certain to be 
concerned with the disposition that can be 
made of such natures, without disturbing the 
harmony of the moral universe. Their virtues 
and their consecration entitle them to heaven , 
but their ungracious bearing or their unpleasant 
manners wholly unfit them for that realm of 
peace and light. It is not easy to see how 
the joys of heaven could be secure if certain 
scowling saints are to be there. In their society 
eternal bliss itself would have its drawbacks. 
Unless some Christians change very much after 
they leave this mortal flesh, there will be some 
extremely unattractive angels I 

Now it is one of the oversights which good 
Christians often make, to forget that it is part 
of our moral growth to develop those graces 
and refinements of character which make us 
agreeable to one another. There is much to be 
64 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

done, even after conscience and will are rectified, 
to make our manifestation of the spirit that is in 
us acceptable to others. It is one thing to be 
good, and quite another to be agreeably good ; 
one thing to have the grace of God within, and 
another to show it gracefully to others. The 
manner of expressing Christian character is 
worthy of more attention than we commonly 
bestow upon it. There is an old proverb to the 
effect that " God loves adverbs." That is a 
good way of saying that he would not only have 
us do, but do well. The proper outcome of a 
Christian life is a courteous behavior. It is the 
business of the Lord's servant not only to 
behave himself " wisely " but also " in a perfect 
way." 



65 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Need of More Stress on Manner 

It is a pity that it should be needful to lay 
special emphasis on manner and on manners. 
But the times require it. The distemper of our 
day is haste ; and haste ruins manner. The 
workman of our day is content if he gets his 
work done at all, regardless of whether it is well 
done or not. The Christian of our age is con- 
tent if he keeps the commandments, no matter 
how. But character without grace is a forbidding 
thing; and performance may be so ill a thing 
that what it has done must all be undone. 

Strength is no excuse for ugliness, any more 
than beauty excuses weakness. It is unfair to 
a noble nature to have it utter itself ungraciously. 
It may be that Thomas Carlyle was a lamb at 
heart. He will be remembered as a bear in his 
manner, and he left a bear's hard mark upon 
the world. Men do not forgive bad and surly 
manners. Time has drawn no oblivion over 
66 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Dr. Johnson's gruffness, nor over Alexander 
Pope's quarrelsomeness. Their bad manners are 
remembered as a blot on the shield which no 
amount of genius will quite rub out. In the 
same way, we cannot be allowed to plead the 
pressure of life, the quickened pace at which we 
move, the wear and tear of our complex and 
taxing existence, as an excuse for slighting the 
civilities and omitting the amenities of life. A 
true courtesy will never be balked of its kindly 
purpose by the pressure of a hurried life. Cour- 
tesy can learn, if need be, to express itself in 
monosyllables, and the language of politeness 
does not absolutely demand long sentences. 

& 

Gentleness of Behavior an Element of 
Harmony 

Moreover, we ought to cultivate a refined 
behavior as an aid to harmonious living. There 
is no such lubricator, to smooth and to ease our 

6 7 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

lives, as graceful manners. Even virtue becomes 
offensive when it is clothed in rough words and 
an ungracious manner. It is easier to take a 
slight from some men and women than to re- 
ceive a favor from others, because the favor is 
rudely done, and the sharpness of the slight is 
dulled by a courteous manner. Reproof which 
is delicate is more acceptable than coarse and 
indelicate praise. How often a real kindness is 
done so brusquely and so curtly that it stings and 
hurts ; and how many times are denials made so 
gently that they almost seem to be favors con- 
ferred. One man will give a refusal with a 
handshake and a bow which are like an opiate 
to the sense of disappointment ; while his next 
neighbor will toss you a benefit so rudely that 
you are too indignant to pick it up. The dis- 
cords of life are all too many already, and there 
is no need to add to them by making another 
between a kindness and its method. And he 
who realizes the need there is of smoothing life's 
68 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

roughness, cushioning its angles and oiling its 
hot bearings, 'will never sneer at " fine manners " 
as at something trivial and trifling. They are 
the upholstery of life. 

This is the reason why what we call " etiquette " 
deserves the emphasis which is laid upon it. 
From some points of view it seems as if the 
rules and the customs of polite society were the 
fad of the foolish and the idle, arbitrary, need- 
less, and without significance. What matter the 
codes and the rules, so that the spirit be kind 
and considerate ? The answer is, that etiquette 
is the common agreement of people who have 
much intercourse with one another, to promote 
a good understanding and to facilitate their 
intercourse. It is the common language by 
which these people try to express their feelings 
and convey their intentions ; and one might as 
easily expect to understand the spirit without 
the letter, as to get at the disposition without 
some form. Politeness is more than a formality ; 

6 9 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

it is a device of society to promote ease of inter- 
course, prevent misunderstandings, and suppress 
disagreeables. There is no more insincerity or 
hollowness in a polite exterior, and the observ- 
ance of certain rules of behavior, than there is 
in self-restraint and obedience to law. There is 
no more hypocrisy in smothering the yawn which 
tells your associates that you are tired or bored, 
than there is in suppressing the groan which tells 
that you are in pain. A serene and pleasing 
exterior is prompted by the desire to save other 
men's feelings. That principle is the corner- 
stone of every system of etiquette and every 
code of manners. A wise writer on the practical 
ethics of modern life has well said of such rules 
and customs : " They are for the most part 
founded on common sense and pure benevolence. 
They are the very best that can be desired for 
securing the highest degree of ease, comfort, 
and refined pleasure in social intercourse." 



70 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

The Basis of Manners is Character 

When we have said this much we have come 
close to the all-important truth that the basis of 
manners is character. It is impossible for the 
man of unkind and selfish heart to be thoroughly 
polite. Somewhere the rough edges of his 
nature will push through and destroy the illusion. 
The only firm title to the " grand old name of 
gentleman " is a heartful of fine instincts. Fine 
manners are only to be learned in the school of 
godliness. The art of saying the right thing at 
the right time, of meeting the occasion with the 
fitting behavior, can be learned only in propor- 
tion as we learn gentleness and regard for others, 
a quick sympathy and a keen self-respect. The 
true culture of manners is the culture of morals. 
Because the only behavior which is sure to be 
always courteous, kindly, gentle, refined, is 
behavior whose sources are in the heart. " If I 
am only a vulgar and ordinary woman," said a 

7i 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

distinguished French actress, " during twenty of 
the four-and-twenty hours of the day, whatever 
effort I may make I shall be only an ordinary or 
vulgar woman in Agrippina or Semiramis during 
the remaining four." She knew that manner is 
more than a veneer put over a cheap nature 
to conceal its quality. It is rather the finish 
which brings out the real grain of the character. 
For behavior is not a thing to be learned 
by rote. It cannot be written into a book. 
The rules are worthless except as they become 
the tools of a fine spirit. No man ever became 
an expert in football or in golf by studying 
rules and treatises on the games. He must bring 
something to the business himself, in the way of 
enthusiasm, pluck, and sympathy, or he will 
never master even the rudiments. So when a 
churl thinks he will pass as a gentleman by 
mastering good manners, he does not realize the 
thoroughness of the process required. To realize 
that ideal, one must cease to be a mechanic, 
72 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

working by rules, and become a creator of moods 
and of dispositions, acting from the inspirations 
of a noble heart. " Special precepts," says some 
one, " are not to be thought of; a talent for doing 
well includes them all." The mark of the heart 
is on all the conduct ; and the only true gentle- 
folk are those who are gentle by nature and by 
habit 

The Tests of the Gentleman 

Take the word " gentleman " which is so often 
used and so seldom used aright. It sums up all 
that Christianity has done to create a noble type 
of manhood, in its social relations. And the 
corner stone of this manhood is a character formed 
on the models afforded by Jesus. A gentleman, 
in the highest sense, is a man who has applied 
the ideals of the Nazarene to his everyday life 
among men. It is Augustus Hare, I think, who 
says that " a Christian is God Almighty's gen- 
73 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

tleman." He gives us the key to the truest use 
of the word. Dissociate it from all the foolish 
traditions society has hung about it. Think of 
it as describing real distinctions and not artificial 
ones. Then see what noble proportions it takes 
and what a fine type it describes. It does not 
mean a man who owns a dress coat, nor one who 
belongs to the most select society, nor one who 
has membership in the fashionable clubs. A 
gentleman is not an idle man in distinction from 
a workingman. He is not a dude nor a dawdler. 
His hands may be soft, or they may be hard and 
rough with work. He may have inherited the 
blue blood of the aristocrat, or the red drops 
of the laborer's veins. A gentleman is simply 
a man who applies the highest principles of 
justice, love, honor, and purity to the common 
affairs of daily life. He is one in whom the 
highest ideals lead to the highest acts. His 
book of etiquette is the Sermon on the Mount. 
His social code is based on the two Great Com- 
74 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

mandments. His society is whatsoever commu- 
nity God puts him in. He has no badge, no 
uniform, but you may always know him by his 
generous word, his quick conscience, his kindly 
acts and bearing. Try men by these tests and 
you will be ready to understand and assent to 
the quaint saying of Juliana Berners, in a very 
old book on Heraldry, " Of the offspring of the 
gentilman Jafeth came Habraham, Moyses, Aron, 
and the profettys ; and also the king of the High 
lyne of Mary, of whom that gentilman Jhesus 
was born." 

The Elements of Good Manners 

Perhaps the first element of good manners is 
self-respect. All true ethics must begin with 
one's self. Jesus has made the measure by 
which we are to gauge our duty to our fellow-man, 
— the esteem in which we hold ourselves. For 
the second Great Commandment reads, " Thou 

75 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." There is 
little hope that a man will honor the amenities of 
life unless he has first learned to honor himself, 
to treat himself as a son of God. We respect 
others because we deem them too good for de- 
basing things. We need to have the same 
respect for ourselves. For that is the tribute we 
pay God's handiwork in our own natures. Self- 
respect teaches a man to think of himself, not as 
the poor, faulty thing he has made himself, but as 
the honorable thing God means him to be and 
will at last help him to become. 

The first fruit of self-respect is dignity. Not 
stiffness, not labored formality, not prudish dread 
of the familiar in speech or in bearing, but that 
high-mindedness which will not stoop to incivility, 
or meanness, or vulgarity. A king may play at 
football without any impairment of his dignity, 
provided he plays as a king ought, with 
chivalry, honesty, and fairness. Such dignity as 
this is a bulwark. It protects the nature from 

7 6 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

unworthy and degrading things. It shuts out 
the intrusive scandal and the low jest. It was 
such a dignity that characterized General Grant, 
and was finely shown in the incident told of the 
rebuke he administered to a man who once 
attempted to tell a foul story in his presence. 
" I believe," said the fellow, with a leer around 
the company, " that there are no ladies present." 
" No," quickly rejoined the General, "but there 
are gentlemen here." A true dignity raises the 
soul above the unclean, the mean, and the trivial, 
as a mountain lifts itself above the miasma 
and the poison reek of the low-lying swamps. 

A third element of grace in the character is 
kindliness. That perhaps is the fundamental 
trait in a gentle life. It is a life of honest 
tenderness toward others, of care for their sen- 
sibilities, of generous interest in their good. A 
kindly heart is a better guide to the best beha- 
vior than all the manuals ever printed. For it 
prompts to the gracious word, the thoughtful 
77 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

deed, the fitting action. At bottom a kindly heart 
is a loving heart, and that brings all courtesy to 
its true basis in the spirit of Jesus. For courtesy 
is nothing else in the world than love in its 
society dress. It is the Golden Rule adapted to 
the drawing-room and the street. If a man with 
a gentle soul, impelled by love and sensible of 
its requirements, is put face to face with any 
problem in politeness, the chances are that he 
will solve it correctly. There are more intui- 
tions of propriety in a kind heart than in all the 
codes which fashion ever devised. 



.* 



Good Manners Mature Slowly 

Such a behavior as we have been considering 
is no rapid growth. It is not the happy chance 
of inheritance nor the sudden gift of conversion. 
The graces of manner are the last fruits of a fine 
character. When a man builds his house, he 
7 8 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

first looks after the stability of his building, its 
safety, warmth, tightness, and strength. Then 
he turns to its decoration. He adorns it within 
and without, every art is called upon to make it 
beautiful to the sight. A savage thinks he has a 
home when he has a hut. But a civilized man 
must have some beauty in his surroundings. 
So as the heart grows rich and ripe in Christian 
experience, it aspires to more than the merely 
necessary virtues, and seeks to adorn these with 
the Christian graces. It aims not alone at 
honesty and justice and temperance ; but it 
would add to these a gentle manner, a sympa- 
thetic spirit, a considerate mind. We may not 
only seek to speak the truth, but to speak it with 
a low voice. It is good to give the needed alms, 
but better still to do it with delicacy and regard 
to the feelings of the recipients. It was right for 
my friend to refuse a glass of wine, but he need 
not have been so rude as to do it by saying, 
" I have no small vices." 
79 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

It is a great pity that we content ourselves so 
long with the elementary virtues, and do not 
advance to the finer and the higher forms of 
living. " Leaving the principles of the doctrine 
of Christ, let us go on unto perfection.' ' We 
need a richer spiritual life. But we are more 
frugal in our spiritual providing than in our phys- 
ical. We become so accustomed to making a 
little go a great way in material things, that we 
think the same rule and practice can be observed 
in laying up treasures in heaven. So we live 
on short allowance of the virtues, stinting our- 
selves on the bread of life, as if the more meanly 
we live on earth the more sumptuously we shall 
fare in heaven. God loves rich hearts ; and men 
like something besides spiritual skeletons. They 
love to see Christian men and women who will 
not stop short with the forgiveness of their sins, 
but will go on adding to the strength of right- 
eousness the beauty of holiness. 



80 



AN 
HONEST 

MAN 



81 



AN HONEST MAN 



A Fundamental Virtue 

TT is not easy to name any one virtue as the 
keystone or the cornerstone of all the rest. 
For the virtues are mutually dependent, and no 
one of them can stand alone. But if any virtue 
comes near to being at the foundation of all, it is 
honesty, sincerity, the love and the practice of 
what is true. No man can be himself, the real 
self, the self that God meant him to be, except 
he be a true man, living the truth and loving it. 
The very first condition of a wholesome natural 
spiritual relation with self and with God is 
honesty of mind. To be insincere is to play at 
hide and seek with one's own soul and to try to 
conceal one's self from God. It is to be rotten 
at the roots of one's nature. It is to be uncer- 

83 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

tain of one's own self. As physical health is only 
possible when all the tissues are sound and all 
the functions correct, so honesty means moral 
soundness, means truth " in the inward parts." 

In the same way all social good rests finally 
upon truth and honesty. When men cease to 
care for these, the bottom falls out from society, 
and its most cherished institutions will disappear 
in a general leakage. " Lying lips are an 
abomination to the Lord," because they are 
a sign of general moral degeneracy. " Man is 
everywhere a born enemy of lies," as Carlyle 
says, because he knows falsehood to be the fore- 
runner of all conceivable evils. Especially is it 
the signal for that uncertainty and doubt which 
prevent all the ordinary transactions of life, from 
the operations of the market to the doings of the 
home circle. The Almighty himself has set us 
the example of the value of certitude, in His pro- 
vision that the course of nature shall be orderly 
and reliable. It would practically check all the 

8 4 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

operations of our daily life if we lived in a world 
which was irregular, uncertain, freaky. Suppose 
that we could not count upon the procession of 
the seasons. Who would plant or till the soil? 
If winter and spring were liable at any time to 
change places ; if we might have snowstorms in 
August, or if haytime might fall in November ; if 
sunrise were as likely as not to be deferred till 
evening, and if the earth turned sometimes one 
way and sometimes the other — what would be- 
come of us or of our enterprises ? Chaos would 
reign, if ever the material world were to go 
crazy like this. 

So it would if we could not trust men's conduct, 
believe that they will do as they promise, that they 
will speak the truth, that speech will tally with 
character. Every period of moral degeneracy in 
the world is a time when men turn liars. The 
well-being of society depends on the general hon- 
esty of mankind. Prosperity only lasts as long as 
we stick to the truth. And if any man would 

85 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

bear his part in the work of keeping life moving 
smoothly, he must make his personal life frank 
and truthful — an honest expression of his inner 
self. 



.* 



The Difficulty of Being One's Self 

Yet, strangely enough, almost the hardest 
thing in this world is to be one's self. It takes 
a remarkable man to be perfectly frank. Hon- 
esty involves so many other virtues — presup- 
poses them and calls for them — that only a 
pretty good man dares be perfectly open. Cae- 
sar Augustus* used to say that the conduct of 
every member of his family ought to be such 
that it might be blazoned daily in the acts and 
journals of the state. But he probably knew 
that the actual behavior of his household would 
make them all extremely reluctant to have such 
an announcement made. The ideal is perfect. 
86 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

To be entirely right within, and then to have 
our conduct express ourselves in all candor and 
sincerity is the highest conception of personal 
character and conduct. It is the goal we are 
probably approaching in that time when we are 
to see eye to eye, to see even as we are seen. 
But we are few of us ready for such frankness 
of life. 

For, as we have seen, no man is likely to live 
an honest life except so far as he is able to 
live a good life. When we try to be honest, we 
find ourselves tripped at every turn by our vices, 
because we all aim to keep up the appearance 
of virtue, and we cannot conceal our faults with- 
out more or less of deceit. They force us to 
play double somewhere and somehow. Who of 
us would let his neighbor see him just as he is, 
just as God sees him ? Who would not shrink 
from having the veil torn away from his heart 
and all the secret thoughts which hide therein, 
all unworthy desires, all wayward impulses, all 

8 7 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

the black spirits which flit to and fro, the un- 
welcome brood of our darker passions— to have 
them all exposed to human gaze ? We are not 
ready to be honest. It is hard to be ourselves 
because those selves are so far from what we 
would have them be. We are glad to borrow 
even the seeming of virtue, and take a certain 
superficial merit from what we appear to be, 
from what we want to be. 



The Deep Roots of Honesty 

An honest life, then, involves much more than 
truth-speaking and lip-sincerity. Honesty has 
roots deeper than the tongue. It takes hold 
on the innermost soul. Except we be right 
throughout — in thought, affection , purpose — 
we cannot hope to be reckoned among the 
really honest. For honesty in its broad mean- 
ing is the correspondence between the outward 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

sign and the inward substance. It is the main- 
tenance of reality, the hatred of sham. It is 
making the label describe the real contents of 
the package. It is listing the stock according 
to the real value of the business. It calls a 
spade a spade, a lie a lie, a theft by its own 
disgraceful name. It subscribes to the creed 
it really believes, and never wears heaven's 
livery to do the devil's work. Whenever the 
fact is knowingly distorted in the statement; 
when the show is not verified by the substance ; 
when fulfillment is wilfully made to come short of 
the promise, there is dishonesty in some shape 
or other. When yea means yea, and nay means 
nay, that is honesty. But when yea means a 
little more than yea, and nay means a little less 
than nay, the margin u cometh of evil." So 
that the idea of an honest life draws the line 
at once at every fraud and every deceit, at mis- 
representation and evasion, and every repudiation 
of promises. All the shuffling pretexts by which 

s 9 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

men dodge the penalties of the statute books, 
whose laws they are breaking, are lies and 
frauds, whether they are perpetrated by great 
corporations, impeding commerce with their se- 
cret rates, or little individuals, stealing from the 
public by dodging their taxes. It is not honest 
to enjoy a reputation for uprightness which you 
do not deserve, and to pray in public for what 
you sneer at in private, and to say to men's 
faces what you deny behind their backs. What- 
ever savors of duplicity, of unfaithfulness, of 
evasion, of fraudulent concealment, of secrecy 
for unfair gain — all these things are but so 
many varying forms of a lie ! And if the defi- 
nition makes liars of us all, why so much the 
worse for us. 

& 

Honesty Begins in Sincerity 

No man, therefore, can be honest with his fel- 
lowmen, who is not honest, first of all, with him- 
90 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

self. To be sure there are men who are per- 
fectly frank with themselves, and admit that they 
are knaves, who deceive their fellowmen. But 
no man ever played at fast and loose with his 
own conscience who was honest with his fellows. 
One may be honest with himself and false to his 
fellows ; he cannot be false with himself and true 
to them. If you will cheat yourself, you will 
cheat your neighbor. Why not? You are not 
likely to use him any better than you use your- 
self. If you can cheat youself with fallacies or 
frauds, you will not fail to cheat him — if you 
can ! Beware of the man who can argue himself 
into believing what he wants to believe, and who 
is ready with a plausible excuse for every ques- 
tionable undertaking to which he is inclined. 
He will not hesitate to try his fatal facility for 
self-deception upon others. Sincerity, honest 
dealing with self, is the very first condition of 
an honest life. A man must know himself, what 
he believes, what he loves, what he feels, and 
9 1 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

must be true to this self-knowledge, so far as God 
will let him, else he can never be an honest man. 
Self-deception is a common trick of weak minds. 
But as the poet says : 

" The worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self, 
All sin is easy after that." 

So if you see your friend winding himself in a 
tangle of sophistries in order to tie himself fast 
to a creed which it is inconvenient for him to 
renounce, you may as well watch him. If he will 
begin by cheating himself, he may end by doing 
the same by his neighbors. If you find him 
plausibly persuading himself that it is right to do 
whatever is financially profitable, you would 
better not indorse his notes. He is an unsafe 
man. If he can conscientiously cheat himself, he 
will have no difficulty in getting his conscience 
to let him do as much for you. If you learn that 
he believes it to be quite right to pay money for 
votes at elections, you will make a serious blun- 
92 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

der if you intrust him with public office ; for 
the man who is ready to buy up the votes is 
quite equal to selling out his constitutents. The 
most dangerous man in business or in politics is 
he who tricks his conscience into compliance with 
his selfish interest, and calls his sordidness by 
the sacred names which belong by right only to 
the noble and the pure acts of sincere men. 



•* 



The Dishonesty of Cant 

It is here that we touch the root of all that 
passes under the name of cant This common 
weakness of small natures is the insincere use of 
great phrases, of words full of solemn meaning 
to which the heart of him who utters them makes 
no response. It is the attempt to make a man's 
speech stand as the guarantee of virtue, integrity, 
or piety, which does not exist in his character. 
It is hypocrisy talking for effect. It is Satan 

93 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

stealing the vocabulary of the saints. No 
wonder that Thomas Carlyle, raging against all 
sorts of falsehood and shams, calls cant " a 
double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie." 
There is the cant of patriotism which shouts for 
the flag while the orator picks the pockets of 
his fellow patriots. There is the cant of poli- 
tics, which talks of great principles to hide 
mean schemes for self-interest; it talks grand 
truths and votes loaves and fishes. There is the 
cant of culture, which professes a love of art, of 
books, of music, of science which has no deeper 
roots than those of the tongue. How many 
young people are drawn into this species of 
hypocrisy. They are led to think it is the 
correct thing to like certain books, to admire 
certain pictures or music, and they fall in with 
the fashion and do as the crowd does. It seems 
like a confession of ignorance or stupidity not to. 
We feel as if it were almost a duty to profess 
an enthusiasm we do not really feel. But let no 
94 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

young man or woman be misled. This is only 
a refined form of hypocrisy. It is the feeble 
false witness of the would-be cultured. Do not 
yield to the subtle temptation. If you do not 
like the book which everybody is praising, say 
so. If you do not see the beauty in the picture 
or the symphony which others are raving over, 
admit it without fear or hesitation. It is not 
necessary that you know all that others know, 
that you feel all that others claim to feel, that 
you like all that your neighbors do. It is 
necessary that you be honest. Better be sincere 
and despised for it than admired for what you 
do not possess. Better be an honest ignoramus 
than a canting, make-believe pretender to knowl- 
edge ! 

Most offensive of all insincerity of this sort is 
the cant of religion. We hear it on the lips of 
those who make a show of piety, but whose 
hearts are cold, worldly, and selfish. It is cant of 
the worst description to pray for blessings on the 
95 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

poor whom you lift no finger to help. It is cant 
to murmur the phrases of the litany on Sunday 
after you have robbed the public by a stock- 
watering financial job on Friday and Saturday. It 
is blasphemous cant to talk jealously of loyalty 
and honor for the name of Jesus the Christ, the 
while you are ranged on the side of everything 
against which he contended — of war, of greed, 
of cruelty, of hate — stoning his new prophets, 
while you build monuments to their fathers, and 
crucifying Jesus afresh in the person of his 
brethren and yours. I once knew a man who 
said of his pure-hearted wife that she was moral 
but not religious, while he himself was religious 
but not moral ; and even as he said it he was 
torturing her daily to her death by his infidelities 
and his falseness, which she was bearing in the 
silent martyrdom of white-souled womanhood ! 
When one encounters such cant in religion's 
fair name, he turns with joy to the passage in 
Revelation which declares that all liars shall 

96 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

have their part in the lake which burneth with 
fire and brimstone. Such hypocrisy and such 
cant require the purgative of searching and puri- 
fying flames in order to be refined into honesty I 



The Honest Man a " Realist " 

But if sincerity is the first step toward an hon- 
est life, the second step is a love of realities. 
An honest man prefers to see things as they are, 
to know the truth, to live in a real world. There 
is no peace, there is no security, there is no joy 
in a false world. He who lives in one dwells in 
a " fool's paradise." He is surrounded by perils 
he will not see ; he is within reach of gain or 
power, but he will not listen to the voice which 
bids him grasp them. There can be no satisfac- 
tion in a life so blind and timid as this, and cer- 
tainly no progress can start from such a life. 
Honesty is the foundation of the scientific spirit, 

97 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

and has given us all our knowledge of the world 
as it is. Honesty is reforming the theology of 
the world, by trying all things by the tests of the 
real and the proven. Faith itself cannot stand 
if it is contradicted by the known facts of exist- 
ence. So the honest man will always be the 
man who seeks and loves the real world, the true 
world, the actual world, above all things else. 
If you would be an honest soul, face the facts. 
Turn to the truth. Let in the light. Try to see 
things as they are. Learn to understand the 
world that is. Be a realist so far as that means 
basing your life upon realities. There is no other 
foundation which will endure. There is no satis- 
faction in living on lies. There can be no real 
good in a world which is all a sham. If a man 
makes such a world for himself, out of his preju- 
dices or his fears or his ignorance or his optim- 
ism, it is none the more inhabitable. The 
business man knows that when he and his fellow- 
merchants have built up a false commercial en- 

9 8 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

vironment, based on credits that have no assets 
behind them, and investments that represent no 
value, and enterprises that are all air and water, 
their unreal world will always tumble in upon 
itself, in a panic which will rattle down all this 
imaginary prosperity in absolute ruin. The doc- 
tors will tell you that when they have disclosed 
a real world in which mosquitoes are recognized 
as evil factors, and fresh air as the foe of disease, 
yellow fever disappears and tuberculosis is 
halted. Thus it is that honesty in facing the 
facts of life lays the foundations of permanent 
and abiding good, while dishonesty, evasiveness, 
temporizing with facts, undermines the dwellings 
of all our happiness. Somehow prosperity and 
blessing are linked with the knowledge of things 
as they are. We get most out of a world which we 
know to be a real world. That was what under- 
lay the thought of Paul when he said " Ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
free." The motto of Tufts College is a singu- 
99 

Lefc. 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

larly apt one for an institution of learning, — 
" Pax et Lux." There is no peace without light. 
The peace, the tranquillity, the security of the 
human soul grow as its light grows. One could 
have no more splendid motto for his intellectual 
career than this. He could have no keener in- 
centive to honesty. For as he values his own 
peace of mind, he will live in the light and by 
the light of God's perfect truth. 



Some Laudable Hindrances 

Not all the hindrances to honesty, the 
temptations to shade or color the truth, are either 
contemptible or blameworthy. Sometimes we 
swerve from the straight line of truth because 
we are tender-hearted. We shrink from hurting 
other hearts. Love tells many lies ; sympathy 
deals extensively in pleasant fiction ; for love 
mistakes its duty, and sympathy is blind to the 
ioo 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

trouble it breeds by keeping back the truth. 
More men in this world have been spoiled by 
blind flattery than ever were crushed by 
discouragement or criticism. Love has defeated 
its own desires many a time by a false reticence, 
an unwise concealment of the truth. Yet 
soft-hearted friends will always flatter the 
unfortunate victims of their attachment, keeping 
back wholesome truths, suffering faults to grow 
unchallenged, or permitting unsuspecting feet to 
tread unwarned the paths of peril to happiness. 
It is a morbid and mistaken sympathy which 
declines to be candid for fear of inflicting a hurt. 
Tell the truth, though your friend may wince. 
The candor of a friend may save a man from 
the sneers of his enemy. The truth may always 
be spoken in love and no harm done. Candor 
does not imply bluntness ; the honest word need 
be neither rude, nor brusque, nor harsh. But 
frankness born of affection never hurt anybody. 
Happy is the man who is surrounded by honest 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

and outspoken friends ! Their honesty will be 
his health I 



Personal Honesty and Public Virtues 

There is no doubt that our times call loudly 
for honest men and women. The public is 
shocked and shaken day after day by revelations 
of falsehood and unfaithfulness in public office, 
in the high places of business, in the great 
schemes of national policy. And we cry out 
for laws and for officials, for charters and for 
commissions, as remedies and as preventives of 
the evils which terrify us. How many schemes 
have been urged upon our generation, looking to 
social regeneration and the cure of the ills that 
corrupt the public life. But there is only remedy 
for dishonesty in finance and in politics and in 
theology. Give us honest men and women. 
Give us souls that love truth and hate lies. 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Give us minds that cannot be contented in an 
atmosphere of sophistry, and consciences which 
rebel and cry out in the presence of deceit. 
There are no reforms and no palliatives for 
present evils, save in a generation of youth who 
love the truth, growing up into a generation of 
mature people who live the truth. The world 
needs your honest voice and mine, uplifted 
against the enormous frauds and lies and 
treacheries of our life. And always the man who 
leads off encourages his neighbors to follow. 
One brave man makes a score like himself. 
Honesty, like all the other virtues, is contagious ! 
He who will be its spokesman shall bless this 
age of ours more than if he endowed a thousand 
libraries or built a city of universities. 



103 



THE 

MINISTRY OF 

WANT 



*°5 



THE MINISTRY OF WANT 



A Turning Point in Life 

TN telling the story of the prodigal son, Jesus 
dwells for a moment on the episode in the 
young man's life when " he began to be in want." 
When we hear the oft-told tale we do not always 
realize the moral purport of that incident On 
the surface it appears like a time for pity. It 
was really a time for joy. 

That was the most fortunate moment in the 
prodigal's life. It was his turning point. It was 
the end of his prodigality, the beginning of his 
true sonship. This was his awakening hour. 
Henceforth he was to be a new man. And the 
voice which roused him was the cry of his own 
need. He came to his senses because he began 
to be in want. And in that sentence we have 
J07 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

the forecast of his future. It is the prophecy of 
the robe, the shoes, and the ring, the fatted calf, 
the festal music, and the father's joy. All these 
blessings ripened from the seed sown in those 
furrows of pain, misery, and hardship, in the fields 
when the swine were herded. Or, to change the 
point of view, if you stand at that moment of bless- 
edness and achievement when the prodigal has 
entered again into the home life, you may look 
back over his past and say with truth that the real 
beginning of his better life was when " he began 
to be in want." It all came from this hour of 
need, of lack, of suffering and shame. 



Want the Mother of Abundance 

So, too, standing at any point of human attain- 
ment and looking for the point where the begin- 
nings of that achievement were made, we find it 
lying close to some human need. Want is the 
1 08 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

mother of abundance. Our plenty is the harvest 
of seed sown in our poverty. The bounteous 
harvests which ripen in the broad fields of our 
land in the summer days and all the abundance 
they stand for have had their sowing in deep fur- 
rows of human need. They are ripening because 
men have hungered, because they have gone naked, 
because they have suffered cold and weakness. 
The rich tilth of the prairies has matured from 
the poverty of our forefathers. So far as human 
effort has to do with the matter, our thanksgivings 
are the fruit of our complaints. We are rich 
because we have been poor. The fullness of the 
granaries to-day is the outcome of man's empti- 
ness yesterday. The harvest is gathered because 
of hunger ; famine and fatness are cause and 
effect. 

This is by no means a paradoxical truth. Its 

reason lies deep in the nature of things. The 

links in the logic by which we prove its truth are 

very simple. There is a familiar proverb to the 

109 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

effect that " necessity is the mother of invention. " 
There is another, less familiar, but a shade closer 
to our line of statement, which expresses the ex- 
perience of mankind in saying that " want is the 
mother of industry/' " Nothing," said Addison, 
" makes men sharper than want." When men 
begin to feel their needs, they set about to sup- 
ply them, and then and there begin the effort, the 
struggle, the endless endeavor to bring plenty in 
place of poverty and to enrich the waste places 
of human want. The hunger of the primeval 
man, the bodily want which has urged him ever- 
more to get himself a better dinner, has given us 
the flour mills of Minneapolis and the packing 
houses of Chicago. Because he once shivered 
in the wet and cold he built himself shelters more 
and ever more elaborate, till we have the modern 
residence, the perfection of convenience and com- 
fort. His need of social benefit and protection 
has led to his ceaseless experiments in govern- 
ment. It is his need of God, his craving for 
no 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

some knowledge and relation to the divine life 
which has led him again and again to the altars 
reared in the name of that mystery, the Eternal, 
the Infinite One. The whole structure and ma- 
chinery of man's inward and outward life has 
been reared and built in answer to the impera- 
tive voice of his mighty wants. It was a deep 
reading of the law of all life which led the Mas- 
ter to incorporate into the beatitudes those two 
pregnant sentences, " Blessed are the poor in 
spirit " and " Blessed are they that hunger and 
thirst after righteousness." In man's spiritual 
nature, as in all his other relations, need supplies 
the impulse which moves him to all his achieve- 
ments. His wants beget his virtues. 



A Blessing in Disguise 

It follows, of course, that the estate we so often 
count a cross and a disadvantage is really our 
in 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

blessing and our help. We are at war with our 
own best good when we sigh for a condition in 
which our wants will be so fully supplied that we 
never "have a sense of need. If a man could be 
so full and satisfied as that, he would be the most 
unfortunate of his kind. For wanting the feeling 
of want, he would miss the incentive to his noblest 
works. He who has no sense of lack lacks the 
most vital sense. He who is full is really empty. 
Nay, more than that, the finest delights of life 
grow out of these very wants. It has been well 
said that it is want which makes life worth living. 
Want of exercise makes motion a pleasure. 
Want of food gives the relish to a man's need. 
The want he has of rest makes his bed so wel- 
come at nightfall. His craving for knowledge 
imparts the liveliest zest to study. And the 
resistless passion for power rouses those sturdy 
ambitions whose development and fulfillment are 
the highest satisfaction he knows. 



112 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Simplicity Not Always Good 

We do not forget the doctrine of our time 
that our wants are our greatest weakness ; that 
we multiply them to our own cost ; that the 
more we have the worse off we are ; that com- 
plexity is hurtful and simplicity the ideal 
condition. But that is only half true. Such 
prophets of this extreme and frugal economy 
in our wants, as Thoreau, are untrustworthy 
and misleading guides, teaching us that our 
only happiness consists in pruning our wants, 
reducing our necessities, living on the shortest 
rations and sleeping on the hardest of beds. 
They create an unjust and wrongful suspicion 
of the most simple and helpful needs. Fielding 
had that wrong prejudice in his mind when 
he said, "It is not from nature but from 
education and habits our wants are chiefly 
derived. " The truth of this saying is not a 
reproach against habit and education, as 
ii3 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Fielding seems to have intended it to be, but 
rather a fact wholly to their credit. It is true 
that we have more wants as we grow in intelli- 
gence and knowledge. We want more because 
we know more. And the more we know the 
more we shall continue to want. A creature 
with only one organ, like a polyp, gets on with 
very little, but his life amounts to as little as 
his wants. The modern man has a thousand 
wants for every one that his ancestor, the cave 
dweller, had ; but he is a thousand times more 
of a man. He wants a better house, but that 
house makes him a better home. He wants 
better food, but his food nourishes him better. 
He wants more intercourse with his fellow men 
but that intercourse broadens and uplifts him. 
So that we must agree with those who say that, 
" True living is ceaseless wanting. " 

To be sure, some wants are morbid crav- 
ings — an unwholesome, vicious evil, the 
creation of our sins and our follies. But that 
114 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

very act only goes to show that the good 
unfolding within us must also develop wants 
after its kind, and that these wants are proofs, not 
of degeneracy, weakness, or folly, but of expand- 
ing life, nobler ideals, a diviner spirit. There 
is such a thing as overworking the call for 
simplicity. Real wants, worthy, healthy ones, 
are to be respected — they are determined by the 
soul itself. 



Our Wants Require Moral Control 

But our wants need the guidance and the 
control of our moral natures. They must be 
formed and they must be directed by conscience 
and by love. He who carried the tests of right- 
eousness back into the very soul of a man, made 
it apparent how deep in the desires and cravings 
of that soul is rooted its moral qualities. Jesus 
went back of deed to desire for the real virtue 

"5 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

or vice of the man. That is good evidence 
that the man is as much bound to govern and 
guide his desires, his wants, as he is to control 
his acts. The man who lets his love of money 
grow unrestrained and undisciplined is as great 
a sinner as he who acquires unlawfully. He 
who permits his desire, his want, if you will, 
for pleasure, diversion, amusement, to run 
wild and get in the way of his duty or his 
responsibilities, is as truly under censure as if 
he committed instead of omitted. But let a 
man's desires be in right and honest directions 
and he cannot have too many of them. Let 
him " covet earnestly the best things " and 
his covetousness becomes a grand and glorious 
virtue. 



116 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

The Blessing of Ungratified Want 

Under such a disposition as this, even ungrati- 
fied wants become a blessing. The unsatisfied 
want of a righteous man makes him a better man 
still. We are helped and uplifted by the things 
we crave rightfully, even though we have them 
not. Such wants are a spur to ambition. They 
are a discipline to the heart. They refine the 
whole life. The desire for a better home than 
one can ever have, makes the home one has bet- 
ter than it could possibly be without this desire. 
The poor man who wishes that he might have 
large wealth to bestow in good works is more 
generous with the little he has because of his 
ambition. The childless couple are tenderer to the 
children of others because of the yearning, never 
gratified, for children of their own. There is 
something which enlarges and dignifies a man 
in these wishes for good things never to be real- 
ized. You would better want a virtue or a bless- 
117 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

ing you could never have than live satisfied with 
that which you had attained. 

" To let the new life in, we know 
Desire must ope the portal ; 
Perhaps the longing to be so 
Helps make the soul immortal." 



& 



God's Hand in Our Environment 

Because God flung this child of His love, 
naked and hungry and blind and deaf, out 
upon the rocks of a forbidding world, where 
the sun should scorch him and the rain and the 
snow should chill him, and the sea wash him, and 
the beasts contend with him ; because of this un- 
toward environment, arousing all his needs, he 
has grown strong, self reliant, confident, trium- 
phant. Out of the crying needs of his condition 
and his instinct to satisfy those needs, man has 
moved steadily up, till, from being but a little 
1x8 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

better than the beast he has become only a little 
lower than the angels. God gave man the disci- 
pline of his wants, that He might also confer the 
reward of his attainments. He made him needy 
that He might afterward make him full. He 
made him poor in spirit that He might give him 
the kingdom of heaven. He made him to be dis- 
satisfied with exile and estrangement that He 
might lead him to Himself. It is a happy day 
for the soul when it begins to be in want of 
God. Out of that consciousness comes its salva- 
tion and its eternal blessing. 



119 



THE 

DISCIPLINE OF 

ABUNDANCE 



121 



THE DISCIPLINE OF ABUNDANCE 



HpHE apostle Paul declares in one of his let- 
ters, " I know how to abound." When one 
reads those words he is inclined to congratulate 
the great apostle, across all the centuries, on one 
of the most remarkable achievements in the 
world. For to know how to abound, how to deal 
with ease and plenty, with wealth or power, with 
great knowledge or unbroken popularity, is about 
the last and finest attainment of a godly man. 
If one can possess great possessions, can wield 
the things he has accumulated, can master his 
masteries over this world and its resources, he is 
a real conqueror and one of the rarest spectacles 
we have the chance of seeing in this world. And 
yet how few there are who recognize any peril or 
123 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

any problem in the use and enjoyment of abun- 
dance ! We hear much about helping men to bear 
poverty, about encouraging, warning, instructing 
those who lack and are down in the world and 
have bad luck; but how many times have we 
heard anybody proposing to do anything for the 
rich, for the prosperous, for those who abound ? 
How few societies there are for teaching them to 
be strong, to be cautious, to be wise in the use of 
what has come into their hands. It is hard work, 
everybody thinks, to be poor and yet wise and 
strong and unselfish and devoted ; but few realize 
that it is at least equally hard to be rich. There 
is in the city of New York a large and important 
" Society for Improving the Condition of the 
Poor." I have never heard of any society there 
or elsewhere for improving the condition of the 
rich. But if there had been one, I suppose it 
never would have had any applicants, because 
very few people ever think that they belong in 
this class. People are even more sensitive about 
124 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

calling themselves rich than they are about admit- 
ting themselves to be poor. So it seems as if a 
little thought might profitably be spent upon this 
peril, to see who are in it and how they may 
avert it. 



Varieties of Abundance 

But let us be understood. The apostle is not 
speaking here merely of wealth, riches in money. 
He means all sorts of abundance ; he has in mind 
abundance of all that men count as prosperity, 
resources, comfort, the means of personal satis- 
faction. " To abound " may mean to have plenty 
of money, or it may mean to have wealth of knowl- 
edge. It may have reference to plenty of friends 
or of chances at success or of moral advantage 
or religious light. All these kinds of abundance 
put a strain on the men and women who have 
them. They constitute a real discipline, as 

125 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

severe, as relentless, as luminous in its revelation 
of the man's inner power and character as the 
mere possession of property. Riches and abun- 
dance are broad, general terms, of which material 
wealth is only one item. 

For riches and abundance are prized because 
they will obtain privileges and enjoyment ; and 
whatever will gain these for us we may count as 
our wealth. The possession of special training, 
of knowledge, or of skill ; the social aptitudes 
which make men favorites among their fellows ; 
the hopeful philosophy of life which makes one 
an optimist ; all these constitute varieties of that 
abundance, that material for larger life, which 
put its possessor in the ranks of the privileged 
class. Good health is a species of abundance. 
So is a good education. So is the reputation 
gained by an honest and an upright life. So 
that there are far more people among the privi- 
leged than are accustomed to reckon themselves 
there. And in no previous age of the world have 
126 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

there been so many as in these days of ours, in 
which we see so much that eases and enhances 
life, put at the disposal of all men. 



The Menace of Our Age 

I do not know of any peril more real and 
imminent to-day, among at least a large class 
of people such as you and I have to deal with, 
than this one of abundance. For there never 
was a time in this world's history when the 
world's life was so productive of riches, 
knowledge, power, as to-day. The Secretary 
of State told us a while ago that the excess 
of our exports over our imports for the last 
fiscal year of the nation was $660,000,000 — 
nearly double what it was for a whole century 
previous. These bewildering figures tell only 
the material side of the tale. The same story 
of abundance, of power, of resources expanded, 
127 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

might be cited from the history of knowledge, 
of science, of invention, of moral reform. 
The princes and kings of old never controlled 
such fabulous resources as the every-day man 
of our times. And they are a tremendous 
menace. If we do not know how to use them, 
they will destroy us. If we cannot control 
them, they will overwhelm us. What are we 
doing with our plenty? Do we possess our 
possessions or do our possessions possess us? 
The first task, then, of him who has is that 
old first duty of self-preservation. When 
things get away from mind and spirit they 
become as destructive as the avalanche and 
the tidal wave. When abundance runs loose, 
ungoverned by wisdom and by love, it is worse 
than want. And the first thing it harms is its 
own possessor. " A man's life consisteth not in 
the abundance of things that he possesseth ; " 
but his death may be compassed by this abun- 
dance! We have many times seen the house- 
128 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

wife exhausted and slain by her furniture and 
china and bric-a-brac ; the popular man by his 
engagements, his sports, his manifold interests ; 
the business man by the multiplicity of his 
enterprises. They have been mastered by all 
these things, compelled to surrender time and 
labor to them, so tangled up in them that they 
became indispensable ; then the things, not the 
people, were masters ; and we have all felt that 
he who has, without knowing how to guide, con- 
trol, administer, does not know how to abound. 



& 



Learning to be Independent of Things 

So the task of him who has many posses- 
sions, many friends, many opportunities, many 
privileges, is to learn, first of all, how to keep 
himself clear of them all, using them freely, 
frankly, joyfully, yet always ready to lay them 
down, do without them, lose them all, with the 
129 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

same freedom and joyousness. When he comes 
to feel that he could never be himself without 
his horses or his sports, his dinners or his 
companions, his business or his friends, he is 
in danger of becoming mastered by his plenty 
and has his lesson to learn. But if he knows 
that were he stripped of them all he could 
still face life without flinching, without mental 
paralysis, or moral despair, he may count him- 
self master of the art of knowing how to 
abound. 

One of the strongest impressions one brings 
from the life of Jesus is that of a man who, 
while poor and unfavored by earthly convention 
or privilege, without money or land or ofhce, 
with few friends and little popularity, never 
seems to have missed them, never really to 
have needed them. He was master of poverty 
because He knew how to separate Himself 
from His surroundings. If He had had all 
things, treasure on earth, a place to lay His 
130 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

head, houses or lands or brethren, He would 
have impressed us with the same sense of His 
own supremacy, of mastery and knowledge in 
using His abundance. He knew how to be 
abased, and to lack, and to suffer, because 
He knew how to abound, to use privilege, to 
keep Himself separate from His associations 
and possessions. We do not feel that anything 
that He had was necessary to Him nor would 
have been if He had had all things. There 
is a wealth of meaning in His saying, " I have 
overcome the world." 



The Real Measure of Manhood 

More than this, in order to know how to 
escape our riches we must measure ourselves 
in some other terms than those of the things 
we have, No man can escape being held and 
overmastered by his possessions who is known 
131 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

by them alone. To say that a man is worth a 
hundred thousand or a million dollars is to 
say nothing about any real worth which will 
last beyond this life. If he is not worth any- 
thing else, then his dollars have converted him 
into their own material substance, and taken 
all that is valuable out of him. If he is just 
a master of arts or of literature, and no more 
— if all his worth to the world is as a dic- 
tionary or a treatise, then his studies and his 
attainments have converted him into an organ 
of human learning, not made his learning an 
attribute and a trait of himself. If he is just 
a good fellow, and that measures all his social 
standing, he is only a chip on the current 
of society, not a rill which feeds its tides. The 
measure of manhood is not in the sum of 
acquirements, but in the effect of those acquire- 
ments. Riches may be taken away ; learning 
may be superseded ; fellowship may cease, But 
the soul which has learned how to use riches, 
132 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

which has been enlightened by its knowledge, 
which has grown loving through earthly popu- 
larity — such a soul cannot be deprived of its 
own ; and it may have its value computed in 
something higher than the things in which it 
has abounded. 



Putting Our Abundance to Use 

But there is more to this knowledge how to 
abound than mere self-preservation. It is 
not enough to keep one's self from being over- 
whelmed. It were a poor life if one had to 
be always struggling against his privileges 
to prevent them from stifling his own better 
life. Navigation would never have grown up 
if men's only effort had been to keep them- 
selves afloat on the sea. The sailors want to 
get somewhere. They build ships to cross seas 
and carry cargoes. Human strength would be 
*33 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

a profitless thing if man's only object were to 
keep himself from losing health. The healthy 
man wants to use his strength. Vigor of body 
means power to work. We are not merely to 
keep ourselves unspotted from the world; we 
are to do some works of positive usefulness in 
the world. 

Now, in the same terms, what are we to do 
with our abundance — our wealth, knowledge, 
comfort, light? We stand amazed at the prob- 
lem which presents itself to the Carnegies and 
the Rockefellers of our age, who cannot dis- 
tribute as fast as they receive, and who are 
overwhelmed with the problem how to give 
without bestowing a hurt, and how to have 
some assurance that their beneficence will not 
clog the channels of good. But the problem 
is in some measure the portion of every man 
who can bestow at all. It costs thought to give 
even a little help wisely and effectively. Care, 
prudence, forethought are part of the price he 
*34 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

must pay who would help his brother. No- 
body ever yet was helped out of any other 
body's abundance by having a dollar thrown 
at him. Unless a thought and a prayer come 
with it, it hurts more than it heals. " Blessed is 
he," says the Word, " who co7isidereth the poor." 
And what shall we do with our knowledge 
— our bright young men and women coming 
out of college and high schools — our cultured 
men and women ? If we hold our acquirements 
selfishly we cheat the world. If we use culture 
as a means of indulgence we demoralize society, 
for the end of knowledge is use. The final 
object of culture should be to ally one's self to 
all men, and all men and their interests to 
one's self. " To do good and to communicate, 
forget not," said an apostle. If education is 
going to drive us apart instead of drawing us 
together, we would better close all our schools. 
If having all knowledge we have not love, " it 
profiteth nothing." 

*3S 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Then, too, what are we to do with the com- 
forts, conveniences, pleasures of life ? There is 
a terrible threat in these luxuries of living to 
those who have not learned how to abound. 
If we let them override conscience, paralyze 
the power of sacrifice, soften the fiber of self- 
denial, they will unman and unmake us. They 
have already reared a generation, many of whom 
are as frankly heathen as any of the ancient 
peoples or those to whom we send missionaries 
to-day. 

Two Imperiled Classess 

I pray God for light and knowledge to come 
to two classes of men and women with whom 
I have grown up and for whose moral welfare 
I am profoundly concerned. One is that great 
American people, with its mighty resources, its 
easy life, its mastery of everything but its own 
136 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

abundance. What is to become of us if we do 
not study how to use the advantage and the 
power we have? There are sad signs in the 
heavens. The terrible fight which has to be 
kept up to hold this nation in the way of jus- 
tice to the weaker peoples of the earth is an 
ill portent. If America does not learn how to 
abound, her enormous advantages will be only 
a millstone about her neck to sink her in a sea 
of trouble. 

And I am concerned for the future of the 
men and women who are coming into the large- 
ness and light of such religious knowledge and 
faith as never was before in the world's history. 
What are we who have a certain conviction that 
good is overcoming and God is winning and 
man is marching on — what are we doing and 
what are we going to do with that faith? We 
have a great light, a rich heritage of religious 
faith. But there is a selfish use of truth 
which makes it as bad as error in its blight on 
1 37 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

the soul. We used to condemn the men and 
women who, under the old theology, used their 
religion as a selfish insurance of their own future 
safety. It was a mean business to think of 
religion, the Christian faith, as simply a premium 
paid for safety from endless burnings. For them 
the Christian's outlook was no farther than his 
own personal good ; it began and ended with 
himself. How much better are we who make 
the larger faith an excuse for indifference, neg- 
lect of duty, failure to spread the truth and 
make sacrifices for it ? Have we learned how 
to abound in our religious freedom ? Not unless 
we have become free and willing distributors of 
what we have learned to prize, and passed on 
the treasure which has made us rich. The man 
who uses his religious faith as a couch for his 
own complacency, a bed to be spiritually lazy on, 
is committing slow moral suicide. He is surely 
forgetting all his higher obligations. The Chris- 
tian who makes "the unsearchable riches of 
138 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Christ " a private hoard is faithless to his duty 
as a steward of God's household. 

There is a terrible incident in that masterbook 
of recent fiction, " The Octopus," in which the 
successful financial operator, at the height of his 
power, master of great enterprises which he has 
come to control, goes on board one of the grain 
ships he owns, as she is loading with the cargo 
which is to demonstrate his power in the world's 
market, and as he watches the golden stream of 
the grain pouring into her hold, the equivalent 
of enormous riches, the symbol of his power and 
its source, stumbles and falls into the open hatch- 
way and finds himself struggling for his life with 
the flood that is pouring from the elevator into 
the ship. He is mad with fear and the hunger 
for his life, and fights frantically against the 
horrible death which impends. But the dust 
suffocates him, the resistless torrent covers him, 
his feet get no hold, his cries are not heard, his 
hands can clutch no firm support, and he is 

1 39 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

buried alive in his own wealth, smothered in his 
own plenty. I seem to see in that ghastly inci- 
dent an apologue of what threatens any man, any 
people, any nation, who having much have not 
learned how to use that much, who do not know 
as the apostle did " how to abound.'' 



140 



THE OLD BOOK 

AND 
THE NEW AGE 



141 



THE OLD BOOK AND THE 
NEW AGE 

An Old Bible 

' I V HERE is an old book on my library shelves 
worth to me more than its weight in gold. 
It is my mother's Bible. To take it in hand is 
to set a hundred chords of memory into vibration. 
To open its pages is to see her face once more, 
serious in its earnest sincerity, glowing with the 
light of her strong and placid spirit, as she read 
to the little ones of her household the words of 
the sacred volume. I know what that book was 
to her, how she reverenced it, loved it, trusted in 
its teachings, drank in its spirit. Her faith in it 
trained by a lifetime of regard for it, wholly 
untouched by the doubts and the questions of a 
later age, was absolute and unreserved. She 
U3 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

sougnt to bring its precepts to bear at every 
turn of life's experience. She wrought its golden 
truths into the characters of her children, 
brought their conduct to its high tests, estab- 
lished them upon its enduring faith. 



New Light on the Scriptures 

I have tried many times since then to realize 
whether that book meant any less to her son 
than it did to his mother. Many changes have 
come in the generation which has passed since 
she was reading that volume. Much has been 
brought to light which forbids the reading of 
it to-day in just the lights in which she read it. 
There is common consent that much has been 
going on to change our point of view of the Bible. 
No well-informed man can assume just the 
attitude toward his Bible that his father and 
his mother did. But does that mean that it 
144 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

means any less to him, that it is less prized, 
that it brings less light, that it is in any less 
commanding sense the word of God ? It could 
not be expected that my mother's Bible would 
outlast a generation or two of active use as to its 
outward form. The cover has fallen apart, the 
pages are dingy and worn, the binding is loose. 
I have been obliged to get me a more modern 
volume. But the newer volume lies upon my 
desk ; and every day it is opened, read, and 
handled, and it serves my outward sense as well 
as my mother's served her. Is the same true of 
its contents ? Is the spiritual word, as it appeals 
to a young man at the beginning of a new 
century, shrunken in volume or diminished in 
authority, to intellect or to conscience, or to the 
heart of that man ? Have the new teachings as 
to its origin, its composition, the dates of its 
particular books, their authorship and their aims, 
dimmed the brightness of the truth which shines 
from its pages, or weakened the effects of the 
1 45 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

lives there recorded upon our lives, or paralyzed 
the power of the Holy Spirit which radiates from 
those pages ? Or is the Bible doing its . ancient 
work among men ? Is it still the bearer of a 
divine message, the record of the revelations of 
God to man, the story of the grace of God 
enshrined in a living soul ? For one, I believe 
that the Bible has not lost, for an hour, its old 
place in the affections or the faith of men. The 
young man may still hold it as the torch of his 
path, the interpretation of his life, the message of 
God to his soul. 



New Theories Have Not Changed the Book 

Stop a moment, and think how many different 
theories about the sun have held a place in man's 
belief during the past two thousand years First 
it was a disk of fire, hung in the firmament to 
give light to the earth by day. Then it was 
146 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

regarded as a satellite of the earth, a sphere, 
indeed, but revolving in an orbit about our world. 
Finally, modern science has fixed for all time 
certain facts in regard to it — that it is a molten 
globe, millions of times as large as the earth, 
about which the earth itself revolves as a satellite, 
composed of chemic elements in combustion 
similar to those which form our planet. And 
there are all the wonderful details about its 
corona, and its photo-sphere, and the awful rents 
therein, called " sun-spots." These theories have 
been so violently opposed to one another that it 
would seem as if they could never have applied 
to one unchanging object. But not all these 
changes in theory, not all the results of research, 
not all the altered concept of this mighty fact in 
our daily lives, have in the least degree altered 
its relation to us, nor ours to it. It has gone 
right on, shining and turning, lighting and 
warming the earth, ripening the harvests, 
drawing water for the clouds, and fulfilling its 
147 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

functions as the bringer of vitality and fruitful- 
ness to earth. 

So of the Bible. Not any nor all the theories 
about it have altered its beneficent power, 
its saving health, its divine inspiration to 
the heart of man. The youth need never be 
dismayed because the theories change about 
the Book. You cannot change the character 
of a great force by changing its name or the 
account of its origin and organization. Theory 
is only the outward name and account we give 
of things. Behind it is the reality, the thing 
itself, and that outlasts all theories. 



The Right to Investigate the Bible 

It is for this reason that the young man to-day 

need have no fear whatever of examining the 

serious teachings of his age, and even its 

speculations in regard to the nature of his Bible. 

148 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

We have the same right that men always have 
had to investigate its credentials and prove its 
real nature. 

You and I are asked to build our lives 
and our characters for this life and for all- 
life upon the Bible and its message. In 
proportion to the importance of the issues at 
stake, are we not bound the more scrupulously 
to assure ourselves that we are building upon 
assumptions to which we have a good right and 
title, which cannot be wrested from us ? I take 
it that this is what modern criticism means, 
about which so many are worried and fearful. It 
is simply the effort of honest scholars to " search 
the title" of the Bible to our honor, our attention, 
and our faith. It is no more destructive than my 
letter opener, by means of which I get at the 
contents of the envelope which encloses my 
friend's message ; no more hostile to truth than 
the telescope which the astronomer turns upon 
the stars to find their real substance and 
149 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

characteristics. It is certainly a significant and 
very reassuring fact that the many Christians 
who have dared to follow the modern students 
and critics, whatever they may have given up, 
are still using their Bibles just as they were used 
of old, for the same purposes that Paul laid down 
in his letter to Timothy, " for doctrine, for 
reproof, for correction, for instruction in right- 
eousness." No reason has been given why the 
Christian man should not continue to use his 
Bible as his spiritual forbears did, as a record of 
God's revelation of Himself to man, as the great 
library of religious truth and inspiration, as the 
depository of eternal truths, given through Jesus 
and His gospel, which the lowliest spirits may 
understand, and 

" Whence wisest sages may be taught 
And wisdom's self become more wise." 



i5° 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

We Need a Revival of Bible Reading 

With this assurance in his mind, the young 
man ought to take his Bible from the shelf, 
dust its covers, and open its pages. Unquestion- 
ably we are letting modern conditions crowd 
us from our Bibles. We are trusting too much 
to the spirit and essence of the Bible which 
filters through other minds into our books and 
our current literature. That ought never to 
suffice for the Christian. It is his duty to go 
back to his original documents. He, above all 
others, should appreciate through first hand 
knowledge the treasures outlined in his Bible. 
I look to see a great revival of study and 
knowledge of the Bible. It is not always 
destined to be thrust aside by the importunate 
newspaper and the surfeit of current publica- 
tions. A generation ago all the folk then in 
America who had any old-fashioned furniture, 
any ancestral china, and plate, and glass were in 
151 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

the habit of stowing it away in garrets and 
cupboards and other places of hiding, while 
they bought new and inferior things, fresh from 
the machine shops and the great stores. To-day 
these same people are ransacking their own 
and other people's premises to discover these 
same pld-fashioned belongings, which they are 
bringing out of their retirement, and setting in the 
places of honor, in parlor and in dining room. 
That is what wiser times and wiser people will 
do for the Bible ! They will reclaim it from 
its exile and retirement and bring it back to the 
most conspicuous places in daily life. 



* 



Looking at Life from the Bible Point of 
View 

It is through such a use of his Bible that the 
young man of to-day will acquire that habit 
which his fathers had, of looking at life from 
IS 2 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

the standpoint of the Bible men and women. 
It will not be enough for us that we take our 
Bible as a medicine ; we need it as a food. We 
must not be content to admit it into our lives 
as invalids cautiously let a little fresh air into 
their sick rooms. We must immerse ourselves 
in its truths, in its spirit, in its ideals and 
motives, as men go forth into the open air 
and take it as their daily food, the absolute 
sustenance of their bodies. That is the way to 
get the Bible thoroughly into one's self. The 
ideas which we constantly imbibe, by and by 
come wholly to possess us. We fall victims to 
the bad thoughts. We are saved by the good. 
If we are to make the Bible the power of God 
in our souls we must be continually imbibing it 
day by day, bringing our minds into the refresh- 
ing and vigorous atmosphere of its pages. Let 
us use our Bibles as a continual education. Let 
us live in the spiritual society of Isaiah and 
Hosea and Paul and John. Let us be daily 

*S3 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

in touch with the ideals set forth in the Psalms, 
in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Lord's 
parables. Let us walk every day in the foot- 
steps of Jesus, giving heed to His words, and 
ever renewing our efforts to understand His 
spirit. Is there any more certain way of pre- 
venting religious atrophy, of keeping the soul 
fresh, alert and growing in grace, than this 
association with the men who were full of the 
spirit and of power, this daily walk with Christ ? 



.* 



The Bible Presents Eternal Principles 

Intimacy and familiarity with the Bible will 
be the means of helping us to keep in mind 
the eternal principles of life. That is the 
same thing as keeping in mind the laws 
of God. His law is the eternal nature 
of things, and that is what most men are the 
quickest to forget. The constant and unchang- 
*54 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

ing things, the surest things to get in our way 
and overthrow us if we forget them, are these 
unvarying principles of the moral world, or the 
eternal law of the Lord. We attend to 
a host of things which have no permanent or 
lasting relation to our life. These, which will 
always affect us, we ignore. Precisely for that 
reason I plead for a freer and a more constant 
use of the Bible. If it comes to a choice between 
the newspaper and the Bible, you can better 
afford to do without your journal than without 
your Psalms and your gospels. The newspaper 
tells of the happenings of the day; the Bible 
tells of the principles which are true for every 
day that was and is and is to be. Elizabeth 
Harrison once asked a fashionable woman to 
join her classes of kindergartners, taking their 
studies in Dante or in Shakspeare. " I have 
not the time " was the reply ; "I am too 
interested in the subjects of the day to take 
up the studies of yesterday." The answer 

i5S 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

was profound and searching. " I ask you to 
come and study the truths of yesterday and to-day 
and forever." That is the greatest motive for 
the study of the Bible. That book offsets the 
great error of our time. Our blunder is to 
exaggerate the value of to-day, and the things 
of to-day. But what would they all be without 
yesterday? Or what are they worth without 
to-morrow? The only topics of the times are 
the themes of eternity. Take care of the 
eternities and the times will take care of 
themselves. If you would keep up with the 
times, you must reach far beyond them in your 
thoughts and ideals. 

The Dogmatist Misses the Spirit of the 
Bible 

Now a man does not get thus saturated and 
filled with the spirit of his Bible by merely read- 
ing it through, nor even by working it into a con- 

i 5 6 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

cordance so as to know all the texts on any given 
subject between its lids. He may do all this 
with a mind so shut up in prejudice, in passion, 
or in pettiness, that his readings will bring him 
no enlargement, his studies no uplift. You may 
ride abroad in the freshest air that ever swept 
down from the upper zones of the atmosphere, 
and if you travel in a closed carriage you will get 
nothing but the smell of upholstery and the reek 
of the stables. If you want the good of the north- 
west wind you must ride with lowered windows, 
or in an open wagon. There is no book, no col- 
lection of books in the world, which calls for a 
larger-mindedness, for a more hospitable heart 
than the Bible. If you go through it after the 
fashion of the narrow churchman, the mere secta- 
rian, the dogmatist, and the bigot, you will never 
imbibe its noblest truths nor feel its real spirit. 
But open your heart by prayer, broaden it by love, 
deepen it by faith, and as your capacity grows 
the Bible will mean, not less, but more to you. 
157 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

The Bible Intensely Modern 

This brings us face to face with one great 
reason why the world has not derived more 
benefit from the Bible. It is not because men 
have outgrown it that they turn from it. The 
true reason is that they have not grown up 
to it. It is not an old-fashioned book ! It 
is the newest, freshest, most up-to-date ; no 
writings in this world are so intensely and un- 
compromisingly modern. Far from being a book 
whose teachings are obsolete, effete, antiquated, 
the most casual comparison of its ideals and those 
of modern days shows that we are centuries 
away from even a fair realization of the principles 
and the forces which it exalts, the mighty truths 
it teaches. The gospel doctrine of love still an- 
ticipates the actual practice of mankind by long 
centuries. The message which Christ bore to 
man, of a Father's forgiveness, a mercy ample to 
cover every repented sin — does not the sin-sick 

158 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

soul still crave just that assurance for its peace 
and joy ? His good tidings of immortality, too, are 
none other than the straining ears of millions are 
awaiting, to give them quiet and assurance in 
death. What inspiration for the battles of life 
could be more thrilling than the promised victory 
of good, the triumph of God, which shall include 
the reconciliation and the loyalty of them that 
have been His foes ? To the plaint of the poor ; 
to the threat of the vicious ; to the need of the 
ignorant; to the statesmanship seeking wise 
policies ; to the spirit of reform alert for correct- 
ives ; to the plain, average man, groping, anxious, 
unsatisfied, the Bible holds out its supreme 
morality, its transcendent motives, its quickening 
faith. When society gets within hailing distance 
of them, the millennium will be well in sight ! 



*59 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Three Tests of the Book 

There are three life experiences in which the 
youth may test his Bible, which bring out its 
power and its glory in mightier proofs than any 
framed by the apologists or the scholars. When 
he falls under the spell of temptation, and the 
mighty admonitions of its sacred pages ring again 
in his ears, he feels the righteous persuasions of 
the very spirit of God moving his soul. " Come 
unto me, and I will give you rest," " Seek ye the 
Lord while he may be found," li The wages of sin 
is death." What a host of helpful powers rally 
around the wavering will at the sound of those 
faithful monitions ! And when sorrow comes, 
what words are such comfort-bringers or help so 
mightily? " Blessed are they that mourn, for they 
shall be comforted," " Whom the Lord loveth, he 
chasteneth," " I will both trust in the Lord and 
wait patiently for him ! " In the supreme crisis of 
the soul, when it is losing its hold on things 
160 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

earthly, when the eyes grow dim and the strength 
of human comfort fails, how close they come to 
the heart. How many have been sustained and 
borne triumphantly through the mystery by these 
blessed utterances, " For this mortal must put 
on immortality," " Death, the last enemy, shall 
be destroyed," " There shall be no more death, 
neither sorrow nor crying nor pain." 

In the light or in the dark, these voices of the 
spirit are the pledge of peace and victory to the 
Christian's heart. Happy is he who hears and 
trusts them ! 



161 



DOES IT PAY 
TO THINK ? 



163 



DOES IT PAY TO THINK? 

A Common Question 

A THOUGHTFUL friend of mine writes me 
thus: "Does thinking pay? All roads 
lead to Rome do they not ? The man with faith 
gets there sooner than the man who thinks, how- 
ever, and the way of the former is easier than the 
way of the latter. Indeed, many on the latter 
road get lost in the mazes of the woods through 
which their path leads them. On the principle 
of economy of effort and of the greatest good to 
the greatest number, is not the doctrine (rather 
discredited nowadays) that you are to believe 
because it is written the sensible one to teach." 
That utterance I suppose fairly voices a wide- 
spread sentiment. There are many who like my 
friend assume an antagonism between thinking 

165 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

and believing. They assume that there can be 
faith without thought. They assume that the 
tranquillity of blind assent is better than the 
unrest of inquiry. They assume that to believe 
is more acceptable to^God than to reason. Our 
question is, are they right ? Are faith and rea- 
son hostile attitudes of mind ? Is tranquil assent 
better than honest search for truth ? Is a be- 
liever necessarily better, in God's sight, than an 
unbeliever ? Has the world benefited or lost by 
men's thinking on the great themes of life and 
of religion. These are very common problems 
to-day. They are raised in some very keen and 
intelligent minds. They would seem to indicate 
a very prevalent temper. It may be that they 
are the symptoms of a reaction from the skepti- 
cal spirit which has characterized a whole gen- 
eration of thoughtful youth. It may be that 
after the period of free inquiry, of speculation, of 
unsettling and of readjustment of men's ideas in 
the light of the new knowledge, there are some 
166 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

who have grown so weary of the seemingly end- 
less debate, that they are ready to turn in any 
direction for relief, and accept any voice that 
lifts itself up as authoritative. There are some 
strange new popes in the world to-day, and the 
Roman Catholic is not the only one who submits 
his mind to what he counts as an authority, and 
tries to induce reason to abdicate in favor of 
what he calls faith. 



& 



Why do we Believe ? 

The first thing to be settled is whether there 
is any necessary or inherent antagonism between 
faith and reason. To answer that question we 
have only to ask another. How does anybody 
acquire faith except by reason, by the exercise 
of the intellectual powers, by thinking? How 
can you and I reach a belief in any truth except 
by pondering what seems to us the evidences for 
167 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

it? Is it possible to conceive of a belief which 
does not rest on thought ? Can anybody be a 
believer except a thinking creature? Can you 
have faith without a mind ? 

The fact is, faith is simply the result of an 
exercise of the intellect. We believe because of 
certain ideas which have commended themselves 
to our intellects, to reason. The Catholic has 
faith in the Pope because he thinks the chain 
of reasoning sufficient which gives the authority 
over souls into his hands. Mr. Moody believed 
the Bible infallible ; if you asked him why, he must 
give you a reason, an argument, a thought — 
always making the same appeal to the intellect. 
Faith is the act of supremest reasonableness of 
which man is capable. You will see this the 
more clearly if you remember Lord Francis 
Bacon's foolish remark, "The more incredible 
anything is, the more honor I do God in believing 
it." This, as Dr. Momerie has shown, is equiv- 
alent to saying that the more impossible of belief 
168 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

a thing is, the more we honor God by believing 
it. " So that to believe what cannot be believed 
at all would be the acme of religious achieve- 
ment." Reason in its highest exercise is the 
basis on which we rest our faith. Thought is 
the way we reach faith. So it is clear there can 
be no hostility possible between them. 



•* 



Thinking is the Process of Reaching Truth 

Consider, still further, what thinking is; it is 
the search for truth, the means by which we reach 
reality. And there is nothing short of reality in 
which we have any right to believe. But it is 
only by thinking, hard, serious, honest thinking, 
that the mind becomes prepared to hold the truth. 
You can hold your belief in the rotundity of the 
earth only by virtue of the thinking you have 
been doing since childhood, which has made your 
mental faculties capable of holding that concep- 
169 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

tion. Your faith in the goodness of God could 
not be maintained for an instant, except on the 
data your thinking in reference to life and the 
creation has been furnishing you. Thought is 
the training of the mind for belief. Reason is 
the root of religion. Thinking must pay, if for 
no other reason, because it is the apprenticeship 
to faith. 



Faith Rests on Somebody's Thinking 

Moreover, if your faith does not rest on your 
own thinking, it must rest on somebody's else. 
The blindest believer by authority simply 
consents to let somebody else do the thinking, 
while he accepts its results. But there never 
was a truth offered to the human understanding 
which did not imply the thinking of some soul, 
to attain and to formulate it. All doctrine or 
teaching is simply truth thought out by the human 
170 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

mind. A man may say he believes because his 
faith is written in the Bible. But then he only 
means that he believes what he or somebody else 
thinks the Bible teaches ; and he believes the 
Bible to have authority probably because he 
accepts the traditional view of the Bible; and 
that is a view which has been reached simply 
by the thinking which men have done with 
reference to its contents. We say that we 
believe the truth of the gospel on the authority 
of Jesus Christ ; but what really lies behind that 
simple act of faith is the thinking which the 
ages have been doing concerning the person, 
the claims, the words, and the works of Jesus of 
Nazareth. It is easy to be carried to the point 
of faith by the momentum of other men's 
thinking. But somewhere along the line some- 
body has had to stop and think, somebody has 
been challenged by the stupendous fact of that 
unapproachable life, and has thought his way 
to the firm standing of belief. And every man 
171 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

is liable to be called upon for that same pro- 
cedure if he chances to be dislodged from the 
tranquillity of faith at the second remove and 
forced to realize that no other man's thinking 
will answer, at last, but one's own grapple with 
the great realities and facts of the spiritual life. 



.* 



Doubt Often Faith in the Making 

But if these things be true, then it follows 
that much thinking which we might, in our haste, 
call doubting, is really incipient believing, faith 
in formation. No man can doubt that some 
thinking, some doubting, if you will, is heaven- 
inspired. When Peter began to think about the 
relations of his old Jewish faith, and to doubt 
whether his exclusiveness was a final attitude of 
mind, was he not on his way to the faith in a 
universal gospel which raised him to a higher 
172 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

belief, and made him a better believer ? When 
the Gentiles who yielded to the persuasive preach- 
ing of Peter and Paul began to doubt the truths 
of their old notions about the gods and their 
worship, were they not moving on to a higher 
faith ? Is not much of what the church is calling 
to-day "infidelity," and " unbelief " and "skepti- 
cism," merely the doubt of old errors, of unrea- 
sonable traditions, of incredible doctrines, and 
the prelude to a better faith in God and man 
and Christ and the Bible ? When reasonable 
and loving men in the church began to doubt 
whether a good God would predestinate to dam- 
nation any of his own offspring, was the church 
full of "infidels," "skeptics," "doubters"? To 
be sure that was what shallow folks declared; 
but most men admit to-day that these doubts 
were only the rejection of a horrible untruth, and 
the prelude a deeper, grander faith in the Divine 
Fatherhood. Dr. Holmes once said that faith 
always involves the disbelief of some lesser fact 
173 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

in favor of a greater. That was what Tennyson 
meant when he wrote 

" There dwells more faith in human doubt 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 



Our Debt to the Doubters 

This would be a poor world to-day in religious 
life and faith if it had not been for the men 
and women who have dared to doubt ; who have 
denied old lies only that they might affirm new 
truths ; who have disbelieved a little that they 
might have faith in very much. We should have 
to give up the tremendous inspiration of Abra- 
ham's example, who dared to doubt the very love 
of his father-heart and the covenant of God 
and offer up Isaac, in witness of a growing faith. 
We must give up Moses who dared to doubt the 
value of all Egypt's fair persuasions, as his faith 
174 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

took deeper hold of "that which is invisible." We 
must part with Paul and all his glorious legacy 
to the world, who came into the larger faith 
through doubts of those things he " had counted 
gain." We must give up William Tyndale, who 
was called " heretic " because he tried to open 
the Bible for Englishmen to read. We must lose 
Oliver Cromwell and his splendid doubts of the 
rights of an English Church over the consciences 
of men. We must lose Channing whose doubts 
of the doctrine of man's inherent depravity led 
America to a deeper faith in human nature. We 
must lose Murray and Ballou with their noble and 
christian doubts about the endlessness of evil and 
the unfatherliness of God, who guided us all out 
upon the table-lands of the larger faith in God's 
Infinite Love. Could we afford to beggar our- 
selves of all these great souls ? Yet every one of 
them has been a heretic in his time to some old 
falsehood, in order that he might be loyal to 
some new truths. And could we keep the Master 
*75 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

himself, who taught men to doubt the sayings of 
scribe and Pharisee, to forsake the old conven- 
tional interpretations, and shocked his Jewish 
neighbors by his bold words, " But I say unto 
you." 

Tranquillity Not the Supreme Good 

Does not Jesus, moreover, teach us a better 
thought than this fear of my friend's, when he 
says, " I came not to send peace on earth, but 
a sword " ? We are not here to seek the tran- 
quillity of a state of mind which stagnates in 
old misbeliefs. The real life of a man must 
be a life of unrest, of surprises, of shocks, and 
confusion to the mind. As faith broadens, the 
soul sees continually new aspects of truth which 
must of necessity cost it new efforts to under- 
stand and to master. But this very exercise of 
the soul is its own most wholesome life. Think- 
176 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

ing is the training, the exercise of the mind 
preparing itself for faith, nay, enjoying its high- 
est estate. " Does it pay to think?" is equivalent 
to asking does it pay to live. Cease thinking 
and you cease to be a soul. " I think," said 
Des Cartes, " therefore I am." To refuse to 
think as hard and as long as is necessary for 
the attainment of faith, is to make the protest 
of indolence, or faintheartedness, or timidity. It 
is like the hesitancy of the man whose physician 
orders him to walk, to climb, to ride, or row for 
health's good sake. 

& 

The Helmet of Don Quixote 

When Don Quixote was preparing for his 
knightly quest he made himself a helmet, and 
when it was done he smote it with his sword 
to test its strength. The blow crushed it, and 
he had to begin again. This time, when his 
J 77 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

work was done, he did not test it. He per- 
suaded himself that it was strong enough, to 
make a second trial needless. His faith in his 
own work was not strong enough to give him 
the courage to test it. So there is danger 
when a man is afraid to test his own belief by 
the sword of reason. He has but small faith 
in his own faith who cannot bring himself to 
put it to the proof of his own and other men's 
honest thinking. Let him not be timid. If his 
faith break at a blow, it was not a sound, strong 
faith. It needed to be made anew. It was 
better that he should go to work again. It is 
hard to have to toil and labor at our faith. But 
faith, like salvation — as an element of salvation 
— is a thing we must work out with fear and 
trembling ; for it is God who worketh in us. 

"What we have won with pain we hold more fast. 
What tarrieth long is sweeter at the last; 
Be thou content." 



i 7 8 



FAITH AND ITS 
FUNCTION 



179 



FAITH AND ITS FUNCTION 



We Believe More Than We Know 

TT^E all of us believe far more than we can 
ever know. The business of this world is 
carried on not by knowledge, but by belief. We 
walk not by sight, but by faith. For it takes but 
a very little thinking and inquiry to bring us to 
the limit of knowledge, to the point where know- 
ing ends and believing begins. We are able to 
catalogue a few facts and to utilize a few forces. 
But when we try to get behind either facts or 
forces, to deal with the realities beyond them, we 
find ourselves baffled and beaten. 

We know, for example, how electricity will act 

under certain conditions ; but what do we know 

of its real nature ? We have been handling things 

material all our days, but who will pretend that 

181 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

we know anything about the real nature of matter ? 
Lord Kelvin lately said, with evident sense of 
impotence in the face of great facts, " My whole 
career is a record of failure ; I know no more 
about electricity or gravitation than I- did when 
I began as a student." How much do we know 
about that which we ought to know best — our- 
selves ? Did you ever stop long enough or think 
hard enough to ask yourself, " What am I ? " 
And did you ever find out? If we are thus 
baffled in trying to understand our own nature 
and being, how much more do we become help- 
less in the presence of the infinite life? " Canst 
thou by searching find out God? Canst thou 
find out the Almighty to perfection ? " We are no 
nearer to an affirmative answer to this question 
than when it was written. To comprehend God 
is the great impossibility. 



182 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Most of our Knowledge is taken Second-hand 

The story is told that an English skeptic once 
declared that he would believe nothing that 
he did not know. " Then, sir," was the witty 
response of one who heard him, "you will have 
the shortest creed of any man in England." That 
retort embodies a truth commonly ignored in the 
estimates people make of knowledge and of faith; 
for what we know, absolutely and by demonstra- 
tion, is the merest fragment of what we believe. 
Nine-tenths of the things we accept most implic- 
itly, we take on trust, on the testimony of other 
men, on the strength of general principles, on 
second-hand evidence. Very few of us have ever 
seen a human body dissected ; but all of us who 
have not seen this process nevertheless believe 
that the organs and muscles and nerves reported 
by others exist in the shape described in the 
anatomies. When we enter a railway train, it is 
probably without the slightest knowledge of the 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

man who drives the engine, or of any of the train- 
hands, or of the track-gangs, or switchmen, or 
signalmen. Yet we believe so fully in their com- 
petency, that they are reliable and qualified for 
their posts, that we trust our lives in their keep- 
ing. Any examination of our knowledge, as we 
call it, shows the same characteristic running 
through it all. The greater part of it is simply 
belief, acceptance as fact or truth of what we 
have not verified for ourselves, and what we have 
no means of verifying. 

The Relation of Faith to Knowledge 

But while very much of what we call knowledge 
rests on faith, it is nevertheless true that what 
we call faith always has a basis in knowledge, 
and could not exist except on such a foundation. 
Consider, for instance, how many of the simplest 
acts of life are acts of faith, and yet how that 
184 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

faith is justified by man's large and well-estab- 
lished knowledge. When you drop a letter into 
the post office, and release yourself from all 
further care about it, you perform an act of faith. 
You trust in the officials of government, and in 
the arrangements they will make for the transfer 
and delivery of your mail. That trust is based 
upon a knowledge of thousands of similar cases, 
in which letters have been duly delivered, and 
upon a broad knowledge that as a rule men can 
be depended on to perform what they engage 
to do. Thus there is no hostility between faith 
and knowledge, but they have a reciprocal influ- 
ence on each other. And faith is the advance 
of the mind from a basis in facts to what tran- 
scends knowledge yet which is not beyond the 
bounds of reason. 



185 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

We Act on the Highest Probabilities 

So it will appear that we really know, know 
fully and finally, that is, comprehend, really but 
very little about the world we live in. And if we 
were to analyze our commonest ideas about our- 
selves and the creation, we should find ourselves 
unable to demonstrate, that is, to prove abso- 
lutely, more than a very small fraction of what 
we accept for true about them all. Yet we pro- 
ceed in life, we govern and conduct ourselves as 
if we knew. We take very much for granted. 
We assume a great deal that we cannot prove. 
Nor do we seem in doing this to do anything 
unreasonable. We go by probabilities. We act 
on what we deem reasonable, even if it is not 
demonstrable. We cannot completely solve these 
great problems. So we take the view of them 
which seems reasonable. And that is what we 
mean by faith. Faith is trust in the reason- 
ableness of the universe. It is a belief in 
186 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

the reliability of reason. It is confidence in 
ourselves, in God as real, as reasonable, as 
worthy of credence. Faith is a conviction about 
the nature of things upon which we are willing to 
act. No man can prove that what his eye sees 
really exists ; yet it is far more reasonable to 
believe that it does than to disbelieve it. No one 
of us can demonstrate that seed time and harvest 
will not fail this year ; yet the farmers will plant 
and till and prepare for the gathering of the 
crop. No man can demonstrate that God cares 
for us and loves us ; yet because that seems the 
most reasonable conception of life and its relation 
to the source of life, we accept and believe it. 
This is what we mean in its broadest sense by 
faith. 



187 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Faith the Supreme Act of Reason 

These thoughts prepare us to believe that 
faith is the supreme act of reason. It is the 
supreme and solemn self-confidence of reason. 
For by faith reason assumes the validity of its 
own insight. By faith reason forecasts what it 
cannot prove. By faith reason acts upon its 
own judgment and takes for granted that the uni- 
verse is not a monstrous fraud upon itself. So 
reason leads up to faith, is crowned and glorified 
by faith. So faith becomes the most thoroughly 
characteristic act of the sons of God. For by 
faith we show that we believe in our power to 
understand our Father in the heavens. 

This view of faith makes it, for one thing, the 
highest act of trust in ourselves, in our own souls. 
For through faith we believe in what we cannot 
know, except through these senses and the con- 
sciousness to which they report. When I trust 
my eyesight, I believe in the correspondence of 
1 88 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

my idea of what I see to something real about 
that object. I have faith in the harmony between 
my mind and the signs and tokens of the external 
world. When Columbus studied the problem of 
a western world and made his brave voyage he 
did so resting in a faith in the trustworthiness of 
his own faculties and his own judgment, as well 
as of all the evidences which appealed to him. So 
when you and I believe in a " city that hath 
foundation," in the " many mansions " of the 
Father's house, we simply trust the yearnings and 
the reasonings of our own natures. It is more 
reasonable to believe in immortality than to doubt 
it. Faith steps forward where knowledge cannot 
go, and sustains the soul until it shall be able to 
see " face to face." 

Then ; again, faith is the highest act of confi- 
dence in the trustworthiness of the universe. We 
could not have any faith if we were not convinced 
that this is a world grounded in divine reason 
unfolded out of the divine thought, which will not 
189 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

mock our honest effort to understand it When 
the reformer sets out to remove the abuses and 
wrongs of human life, he does so because of his 
sublime trust in the supreme moral forces of the 
universe, and that they are moving toward right- 
eousness. When we are striving to bring in an 
era of peace among nations, we do so in faith 
that the great forces of social life are moving 
men to see the folly and the sinfulness of inter- 
national strife. And it is this that holds us 
against all the bluster and brag of jingo states- 
men and all the resentment of a reluctant public, 
to the conviction that this great and righteous 
principle will one day prevail. It is faith in the 
moral order as the real order, the moral law as 
the real law, which helps us to these great 
struggles and glorious triumphs of the better 
cause. 



190 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Faith is Confidence in God and 
the Universe 

Because of these things faith is an act of con- 
fidence in the reasonableness of God, in the wis- 
dom of the infinite. " The fear" — that is, the 
reverence — " of the Lord is the beginning of 
wisdom," says the proverb. So we may declare 
that the wisdom of the Lord is the beginning of 
reverence. We revere the Most High because 
our reason rests in his reasonableness ; because 
we see the tokens that His creation is wrought 
out in thoughtfulness and in intelligence. We 
could not revere an irrational God. We reverence 
Him because he stands to us for the highest 
thought. But all this pre-supposes some knowl- 
edge, some apprehension of God. Faith is not 
exercised in ignorance, total and unqualified, any 
more than the bird can fly in a total vacuum. 
Trust is inconceivable without some knowledge. 
Out of the little we know of God we feel warranted 
191 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

in trusting in Him, having faith concerning the 
things in which we can have no knowledge. 



& 



Faith the Basis of Conduct 

But faith is not an estate that is final. It is, 
indeed, the culmination of reason. But it does 
not end in itself. It has its own culmination in 
action. " Faith without works is dead." Faith 
is a conviction on which we are willing to act. 
It goes deeper than the intellect, it touches the 
feelings and through them moves the will. It is 
confidence which manifests itself in conduct. 
That is always the finest faith which does not 
rest in mere theory, but goes on to practice; 
which hazards actual well-being on its forecasts 
and its intimations. The ship-builder shows a 
certain kind of faith, when he constructs a vessel 
which he says will stand the brunt of the waves, 
and the drive of the gales, and make her way to 
192 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

port. But that is a finer faith which is in the 
heart of the vessel's master, when he takes that 
ship from the builder's hands and trusts his own 
life on her decks, and his own treasures in her 
hold, and weighs her anchor. So all real and 
vital faith has its issue in action. We get our 
motives for what we do from the things we 
believe; and no man believes very strongly in 
any matter unless he is willing and ready to act 
upon his belief. 



Faith the Prelude to More Knowledge 

Further yet, faith is the prelude and the 
preparation for knowledge. " We walk by 
faith and not by sight." True, but walking by 
faith is the way we learn to walk by sight. The 
architect works by faith when he dreams out 
the possible St. Peter's. The seaman steers by 
compass across the Atlantic, navigating by faith 

*93 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

in the needle and the electric currents, before 
he sails at last by sight of Fire Island light- 
ship and Sandy Hook and the buoys of the 
ship channel in New York harbor. Lieutenant 
Peary walked by faith across the great ice plain 
of Greenland, before he traversed it by sight. 
So we go from faith to sight in things spiritual. 
By faith in love as the real and eternal rule and 
principle of life, we live in love, until at last we 
know that love is all we believed it to be. By 
faith in the right we do the right, and learn by 
experience, that is, by sight, that right is the 
everlasting foundation of peace and joy. By 
faith in the soul, in the reality of our own spirit- 
ual nature, we walk in the spirit until we grow 
to feel and to know that the spirit is the most 
real thing in the creation, till we are prepared to 
see the mighty purport of Jesus' saying, " Whoso- 
ever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." 
Thus we go from knowledge to faith and then 
from faith to larger knowledge. And then, if 
194 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

always we act upon our faith, and carry it into 
works, and realize it in conduct, we go from 
that new knowledge to a larger faith and then 
to grander works, and so to greater knowledge 
still. The circles of life widen about the soul in 
amazing and overwhelming magnitudes. Faith, 
reasonable faith, faith which roots itself in knowl- 
edge — this is the key to infinite life, the eternal 
privilege and joy of the spirit of man. Only let 
it be remembered that to keep itself alive, it 
must always approve itself as a faith which acts, 
a faith of deeds and conduct, of experience. In 
such a faith we come to have " eternal life." 



*95 



MEN, WOMEN, 
AND CHURCHES 



r 97 



MEN, WOMEN, AND CHURCHES 

No Sex in Religion 

/ I V HE gospel of Jesus Christ was and is 
addressed to the whole human race. It 
is therefore addressed equally to men and women. 
There is a deeper law than the law of sex. It 
is the law of our common humanity. We are 
all children of God, human souls, born of 
common conditions, having common experiences, 
destined to a common future. So there is 
no special gospel for men as apart from women. 
We are all one in the sight of God. 



199 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Why Speak to Men as a Class 

For that very reason it sometimes seems 
desirable to speak to men as a class. Because 
the tendencies of an age may draw men into 
special ways of life, which are not consistent 
with the common ideal. To prevent the 
division of the race into classes, it is sometimes 
needful to treat separately the classes into which 
it tends to divide. When one side of the body 
is weaker than the other, we treat that side 
to exercise. When one part of the class at 
school falls behind, we drill that part by itself. 
That is the motive for this particular chapter. 
I would speak to men especially, because the 
impression is abroad that men are not so 
attentive to religious and moral affairs as they 
ought to be. If that is true, it is a false and 
perilous state of affairs. There is no more vital 
concern of human beings than that which relates 
to the life of their souls. It is a matter which 
200 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

belongs to men as much as to women, to women 
as much as to men. So that if either kind of 
human beings is leaving the things which 
relate to their common higher life to the other 
class, there is danger ahead to both ; and 
those who see that danger ought to speak out. 

On this premise I do not w r ish to dogmatize. 
I do not believe that rash statements or 
opinions are at all useful. I only wish to bring 
to notice some matters which appear to be 
significant, and to ask you to make your own 
inferences. I ask my readers to be the grand 
jury, while I lay certain facts before you ; then 
you young men who read shall decide for 
yourselves whether there is material enough 
to make out a case against men in general of 
neglect of duty in relation to the world's higher 
life 



20I 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

The Case Against the Men 

There are certainly some facts which warrant 
the raising of such a question. Attentive 
observers of the times note some curious 
tendencies. They go into churches and see 
two or three times as many women as men. 
They go into the schools and find the women 
in charge of the education of children out- 
numbering the men ten to one. They come 
back from the philanthropic field to report 
a tremendous majority of women at work in 
the world's charities, raising moneys, overseeing 
institutions, having charge of committees, doing 
the real work. It is startling to see the same 
characteristics in that great field covered by 
the clubs of our modern life. When men form 
clubs, it is usually either for politics or for 
pleasure. It is probable that a large proportion 
of the women's clubs have as an end some 
ethical or intellectual purpose. I could name 
202 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

a half-dozen clubs of women in my immediate 
circle which are making a serious study of 
literature, of social conditions, of education, of 
the higher themes which interest intelligent 
classes ; I should not find it easy to name the 
same number of clubs with similar aims made up 
of men. The interest — and for that matter 
the ability, too — of women in the higher 
education is worrying educators who have 
noted the rapid push of women to the fore. 
In some of the co-educational colleges there 
is great alarm because women are coming in 
such numbers and are taking such high rank. 
At Harvard even the proximity of Radcliffe as 
an u annex " is viewed with alarm, and a 
well-known professor has raised the cry that 
Radcliffe is leading to the " feminization " of 
the university faculty, that is, to the lowering 
of the standards of teaching to adapt it to the 
female mind. But in my own college the trouble 
seems to be the other way ; for in a recent 
203 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

year of all the candidates for Phi Beta Kappa, 
there was only one man among seven or eight 
women. I know, to touch another field, of a 
good many " mothers' clubs " in many cities. I 
think I have yet to hear of a " fathers' 
club." Indeed, a prominent New York educator, 
wishing to reach the fathers, talked not long 
ago to the New York County Mothers' Club on 
"A father's duty to his children;" and one 
of his most pointed statements was to the 
effect that to-day the father scarcely is a father 
at all. He is a bread-winner, money-getter, 
office-holder, business-man, trolley-car-passenger, 
club-man, newspaper-reader ; but he is charged 
with scarcely knowing his children, with 
spending little time with them, sometimes with 
knowing them only by gaslight and Sunday 
sunlight. 

Now I do not bring up these matters as 
proving anything against men. I am not to 
draw any inferences from them. That is 
204 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

for you to do. They certainly do represent 
a state of things which many people are 
observing, I have questioned many witnesses, 
from many walks in life, both men and women, 
concerning this tendency, and they all agree that 
there is such a drift. It may be men are not 
to blame for it. It may be their misfortune. 
It may be that it is the result of modern 
conditions. It may mean a permanent change 
in affairs. 



Need of Men's Influence in Religion 

But, clearly, if such a condition prevails, it is 
something calling for your action and mine. If 
men are suffering themselves to be superseded 
in their interest and care for the higher mental 
and moral life, it is time to call a halt. It is 
unfair to leave the burden of interest and care 
for these things to women, both out of regard for 
205 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

them, and out of regard for the interest of 
society. This is a man's world as well as a 
woman's. Women cannot manage it alone, any 
more than men can. The partnership holds in 
all respects — in duties, privileges, gains and 
losses. You cannot afford to surround your 
families with religious influences which are 
created and conditioned purely by women. You 
ought not to be willing to have your children 
educated under purely or largely feminine 
influence. If the conditions I have hinted at are 
real they ought to be changed. 

Especially is this true of the church and its 
particular interest — the Christian religion. It 
is an unwholesome state of affairs when a critic 
can fairly speak, as one did recently, of 
" women's activities and men's inactivities in the 
church." The Father's business is a business 
that requires men's attention. " To seek and to 
save that which is lost " is a man's care as well 
as a woman's. How can a minister "preach 
206 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

the word " in all its bearings and relations if he 
preaches it mainly to women ? How can the 
Sunday school rear your children, girls or boys, 
in an all-around " nurture and admonition of 
the Lord," if it has to be planned and carried 
on without the influence and thought and 
personal presence of men ? It is not enough for 
men to join the " reform clubs " of society. 
That is too late an appearance on the scene. 
Horace Mann used to say that where there is 
life " one former is worth a thousand reformers. " 
Your Sunday schools are the "forming clubs " 
of the church, and of all our modern life. Is it 
not a wise economy to be in at the forming of 
moral and religious ideals rather than to wait 
and have to reform them ? 



207 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

Men's Influence on the Pulpit 

I have alluded to the influence of these things 
upon the minister himself, who necessarily, in 
Protestant churches, is so large a factor in the 
religious temper and environment. Let me 
speak delicately and reverently. The minister 
who does not recognize his debt to the religious 
life of womanhood is an ingrate and a Pharisee. 
From our mother's knees, we who preach the 
word are debtors beyond the power of words to 
tell, to the Christian life of womanhood. It 
guided our childhood ; it sanctified our manhood. 
It has refined, chastened, inspired us all. But 
there is a man's view of religion as well as a 
woman's. There is a man's moral character as 
well as a woman's. He who said, tl The servant 
of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto 
all men," said also, " Watch ye, stand fast in the 
faith, quit you like men, be strong." A minister 
needs to have his character formed and corrected 
208 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

by the vigor of men, as well as by the refinement 
of women. He needs the sturdy companionship 
of his brothers. He should feel the demand and 
the cravings of the souls of strong men. He 
needs to be trained by the aggressiveness of men 
as w r ell as the receptiveness of women. I once 
knew a church which had long been under the 
ministry of a man of gentle, over-refined nature, 
and when he went away the church chose as its 
minister a man rugged to the point of coarse- 
ness, blunt, raw, and emphatic. And a man in 
the church accounted for the violent contrast by 
saying that the people had had " a long course 
of sermons on roses and posies, and now it 
would do them good to hear about noses and 
toeses." But in a church where the masculine 
influence was strong and constant there could be 
no such one-sided preaching. A healthy balance 
would be kept, and the minister would be trained 
to speak a message in which strength should 
blend with gentleness, and force go hand in hand 
209 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

with love. Any minister insensibly adapts his 
preaching to the people whom he talks to ; else 
he is no true preacher. He cannot long remain 
an all-round preacher, if he preach wholly to men 
or wholly to women. So that men are really 
responsible through their presence in or absence 
from the churches, for the kind of religion and 
the sort of theology which emanates from the 
pulpit. 



Men are Crippling the Churches 

Now no man would contemplate with com- 
posure the possibility of the closing or the 
serious crippling of the churches in the com- 
munity in which he lives. You are sensible of 
the vast difference it makes in every human 
interest from high to low, whether there is a 
wholesome religious force going out from the 
church. Your home is not safe, nor is the house 
210 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

which shelters it, without the life generated in 
the churches. That was a pertinent question 
which Horace Bushnell put to business men 
when he asked them what they supposed real 
estate was worth in Sodom ! It is equally 
pertinent to ask any father how he would like 
to bring up his family in Gomorrah. Cancel 
the religious influences which go out from the 
churches of your town, eliminate the moral life 
which they sustain, and the exodus from the place 
would be as certain as if the plague were to 
break out within its borders. 

But every man contributes, as far as his 
influence goes, to make a Sodom of his city, 
when he withholds his support from the 
great moral and religious safeguard of the 
community. Even if he succeed in keeping 
his own life pure, kindly and just, he lends 
no help to make other men and women, the 
dangerous classes who sway between good 
and ill, any better, any truer, any kindlier. 

211 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

So far as he is concerned, the work for the 
world's redemption will stop, will get no 
more aid, will lag and languish. " He that 
is not for us is against us," said the Mas- 
ter. " He that gathereth not with me, scat- 
tereth abroad." 



The Effect on Men Themselves 

But I ask it of you on higher ground. 
I hate that presentation of duty which 
bases it upon the use it is going to be to 
somebody else. Fathers are exhorted to 
be good, so as to set an example to their 
sons. They are coaxed into church-going 
because it will give them social standing. 
They are invited to be pure because that 
will make them healthy. Now I do not 
question the soundness of all these mo- 
tives. But they do not come anywhere 
near the real and vital reason why a man 
212 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

should be religious or why he should be 
moral. There is a higher reason, and that 
is the one I would make the most urgent 
and impressive. I ask your interest, your 
personal care, your love and your loyalty 
to the church of Jesus Christ, to its ser- 
vices and to its works of love, of charity, 
and of salvation, because these things will 
bring you into touch with the life and the 
spirit of Jesus Christ himself ; and that 
is the highest good of any one of us. I 
would have men come to the churches not 
simply because the churches will help some 
third party, but because these centers of 
religion will help them. Is there anything 
better for a man in our life than to be 
brought, once in seven days, by service, by 
ritual, prayer, song, and sermon, into close 
and tender relations with the life of Jesus 
Christ ; to have glimpses of that counte- 
nance, white and radiant with the light 
2I 3 



AN HONORABLE YOUTH 

that never was on land or sea ; to hear 
those words which set our spirits on fire 
with moral enthusiasm and love of the 
highest and best; to catch something of 
the glory of the sublime and transforming 
truths He uttered, to which our hearts give 
answer, as deep calling unto deep ? Is not that 
what you need to make you better men, the best 
men you can become ? If you were to take 
what Christianity proffers you in this frequent 
fronting of your life with that of Jesus Christ, do 
you not believe you would be better men ? And 
is there any other duty of life which at all com- 
pares with that of continually being and becom- 
ing " a better man " ? 

I have stated the case of current society 
against men in their relations to the higher life. 
It is for you to decide if there is ground for 
indictment. If you find that there is, I charge 
you to take such action as the gravity of the 
matter calls for. 

214 



DEC 1 19W 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 

PreservationTechnologie 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATK 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 610 728 8 * 



JUL 
nltnifll 









Hun U hi 
mlnlnUU 



iiiii siiSiii 



i 



JWL 



IHH 



SHW 



